The thing is mordulin, is that in a full round action of attacks that your attack bonuses decrease so your likelyhood of doing that 100 dmg in a round decreases.  Plus this ability really messes up creatures with DR.  I got to see a PC class using the abilites (not the 100 dmg one, but some mid lvl ones) and let me tell you its really broken compared to the standard pc classes.  On top of all of that you get counted a a fighter as 2 levels lower, and if you take 1 level in fighter you can use fullplate as well as the manuvers.  Oh yea D12 HD....

In conclusion the DM and i figured out how to make the class a bit more balanced by the fallowing.

Make class simular to ranger ranger in the sence that you cant use stances/menuvers in medium or heavy armor

Remove the counted as a fighter of 2 levels lower to remove wepon spec/ weapon mastery, because a warrblade with those feats is broken.

Leave me some feedback and let me know if you think if that was a good way to balance that class out a bit...

Well I'm disappointed to read this.  I was getting excited about this book; it seemed to add some much needed flavor as alternatives to the martial classes.  But these abilities do sound over the top for a non-epic game.  That's a shame.

The thing is mordulin, is that in a full round action of attacks that your attack bonuses decrease so your likelyhood of doing that 100 dmg in a round decreases.  Plus this ability really messes up creatures with DR.  I got to see a PC class using the abilites (not the 100 dmg one, but some mid lvl ones) and let me tell you its really broken compared to the standard pc classes.  On top of all of that you get counted a a fighter as 2 levels lower, and if you take 1 level in fighter you can use fullplate as well as the manuvers.  Oh yea D12 HD....

In conclusion the DM and i figured out how to make the class a bit more balanced by the fallowing.

Make class simular to ranger ranger in the sence that you cant use stances/menuvers in medium or heavy armor

Remove the counted as a fighter of 2 levels lower to remove wepon spec/ weapon mastery, because a warrblade with those feats is broken.

Leave me some feedback and let me know if you think if that was a good way to balance that class out a bit...

[/QUOTE]

I just recently got my hands on the book of nine swords so I haven't read it in detail yet. What I have read and the disscussions i've had with a couple friends who have read the book completely lead me to think the warblade is broken but can be houseruled back in line, the crusader is powerfull but not broken, its just the powercreep we've been seeing in the latest few books but it is a bit complicated to play and can slow down battles at least until you get the hang of it. The swordsage looks interesting I might try one myself when I stop DMing, a fighter with a dash of sorcerer and a pinch of thief and top it all off with a few other interesting odds and ends. I like that it is very customizable so no two swordsages need be alike.

One of the things I would do to help balance out the warblade is tone down his weapon feats. Right now he can apply any weapon feat he has to any weapon he can use, I think this is way overpowered. My thoughts are to only let him use this class ability on groups of weapons similar to the Mror Stalwart feat in Eberron.Each discipline in the book of nine swords has a weapon group associated with it this looks like a good starting point, the warblade picks a discipline and those weapons are the ones he can interchange feats with, evey five levels he can add a new set of weapons.

[QUOTE]B wrote
Technically, the cleric can do 150 pts at 15th level. I've personally had a wizard deal 150 pts of damage at 10th level with 2 rounds of casting channelled pyroburst + sudden empower + sudden maximize while invisible. It was kind of gross, but those combinations are always going to be around. If the style of the book doesn't fit your campaign you can aways house rule it. Like shoe says, it may seem broken, but in comparrison it's not all that bad...really.  [/QUOTE]

B, I though the complete arcane said you coudln't stack 2 sudden feats.

[QUOTE]B wrote
Technically, the cleric can do 150 pts at 15th level. I've personally had a wizard deal 150 pts of damage at 10th level with 2 rounds of casting channelled pyroburst + sudden empower + sudden maximize while invisible. It was kind of gross, but those combinations are always going to be around. If the style of the book doesn't fit your campaign you can aways house rule it. Like shoe says, it may seem broken, but in comparrison it's not all that bad...really.  [/QUOTE]

oh yea why didn't that player cheeze a bit more by having a rod of enegy admixture and make that spell do 300 damage at 10th level

[QUOTE]Monsoon28 wrote
So how would one finally describe this book?
A D&D book to turn your fighter into DragonballZ?
I lost interest when I heard the book was essentially how to make your Fighter a Sorcerer, without becoming a Sorcerer.

Looking forward to a proper review on this one. Maybe I'll change my opinion on this one later on.
[/QUOTE]

Not really. DBZ had a lot of cheesy special effects. Most of the Nine Styles don't, at all. Desert Wind and Shadow Whatsit are the flashiest, but they could also logically be the hardest to acquire. I wouldn't compare to DBZ at all. Maybe "Crouching Dragon, Hidden Tiger", but that would really be stretching it too - there's a little bit of wuxia flavor but not much, and it is easily excised if you so wish.

ChrisOrlando -

Yeah, +100 damage looks nice and shiny. But it's not that cracked up. For starters, it's a standard action, so it can't be combined with a charge (which limits your range). It is countered by AC, which can still be made formidable even at 17th level. An old brass dragon (sample CR 17) has an AC of 32 before it takes any actions to buff itself (and the dragon *always* knows you're coming), so with just a handful of simple spells it becomes very hard to hit (Mage Armor + Shield = AC 40, -17 for BAB, -4 for weapon, -1 for Focus, -8 for Str = needing a 10 to hit, so it's a 50-50 for your big shot; kind of like most spell DCs). It's blocked by invisibility, mirror image, blur, displacement, and any form of concealment. I know someone's going to bring up Boots of Striding and Springing, Goggles of True Seeing, bla bla bla, but if you need to spend thousands of gp to counter my 1st level spell, I'm going to say I still have a bit more leverage than you do, and I haven't even put much thought into this exercise yet. If I need to make a CR 17 monster difficult to hit, he. will be. difficult. to hit.

Also, as I remember, you had a thread on here in which you talked about how your 8th level paladin got about +56 to damage. Now, I'm not real min/maxing expert, but if you can get +56 on a character at about 10th level, by 17th you should be having +100 or more very easily. If you get four attacks, you get a lot more than +100, because even one secondary attack landing means you got the same as the warblade if your miscellaneous damage modifiers are +100, and more than that if your miscellaneous damage modifiers exceed +100.

Finally, to the naysayers in general, I'd like to know how +100 damage once per combat equates to Wish four times per day, or Time Stop, or Mordenkainen's Disjunction, or Gate. I mean, seriously. Gate is the "Summon Monster Manual" spell! Mordenkainen's Disjunction will destroy a kingdom's worth of magical items! Wish is WISH!

Criticizing an entire book because of what two classes can do at 17th level is like pooh-poohing the PHB because a high level druid or cleric can beat down any other character class. And you know the melee classes needed this kind of upgrade pretty badly.

Finally, to the naysayers in general, I'd like to know how +100 damage once per combat equates to Wish four times per day, or Time Stop, or Mordenkainen's Disjunction, or Gate. I mean, seriously. Gate is the "Summon Monster Manual" spell! Mordenkainen's Disjunction will destroy a kingdom's worth of magical items! Wish is WISH!

Criticizing an entire book because of what two classes can do at 17th level is like pooh-poohing the PHB because a high level druid or cleric can beat down any other character class. And you know the melee classes needed this kind of upgrade pretty badly.