Book of Nine Swords was a very novel take on martial characters in DnD which led directly into 4e. It had some very interesting idea, but I don’t think we need anything that complex to fix 5e’s martials.
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Let's talk about D and D's Book of Nine
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Swords for D and D35. If you're a 5e
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player, you may have never heard of
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this, but it's a a really interesting
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and odd bit of history in Dn D. Toward
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the end of the lifetime of Dn D35, we
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got a Splatbook called The Book of Nine
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Swords. It was a Marshall focused
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supplement that added completely new
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mechanics for Marshall characters called
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maneuvers. In a lot of ways, they worked
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like spell slots. Maneuvers had levels.
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They would recharge sometimes daily.
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Sometimes they had some other mechanic
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that would let them recharge faster, but
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in a lot of ways they were special
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attacks that had special names and
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unique effects and stuff that felt kind
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of in line with other Marshall
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characters, but they had very specific
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effects and again worked a lot like
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spells. At the time, it was a pretty
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controversial book because it felt like
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such a deviation from what Marshall
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characters had been for years in Dn D.
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But the book also came out during the
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development of fourth edition D and D.
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So in a lot of ways it was a weather
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vein to see will these mechanics work?
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Will people enjoy them? Does this work
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at the table or are we going to have to
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scrap this and make Fory do something
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else? Fory obviously leaned into the
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same concept where all of the Marshall's
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special abilities looked and worked very
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much like spells, which like we're not
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here to poo poo Fory. That's not what
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this video is about. But there are a lot
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of people who look back fondly on Book
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of Nine Swords because it offered
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something different, because it offered
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buttons for Marshall characters to push
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beyond I stab a dude. Now, we don't have
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something equivalent really in the 2014
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or 2024 5e rules. The closest that we
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really have is maybe the cy warrior, but
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definitely the battlem. like the battlem
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is very much the inheritor of those
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special attacks from Book of Nine Swords
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and from fourth edition. So, I don't
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think we're ever going to see Book of
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Nine Swords come back. We're probably
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not going to see those like Marshall
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initiator characters the same way that
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we had them at the end of 35, but I
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understand why people liked them because
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it just gave Marshall characters buttons
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to push beyond just trading hit points.
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Why you like this?
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