Up next in 10
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.
#dnd #dnd5e #2024dnd
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Let's talk about D and D's Book of Nine
0:02
Swords for D and D35. If you're a 5e
0:05
player, you may have never heard of
0:06
this, but it's a a really interesting
0:09
and odd bit of history in Dn D. Toward
0:11
the end of the lifetime of Dn D35, we
0:14
got a Splatbook called The Book of Nine
0:15
Swords. It was a Marshall focused
0:18
supplement that added completely new
0:19
mechanics for Marshall characters called
0:21
maneuvers. In a lot of ways, they worked
0:23
like spell slots. Maneuvers had levels.
0:26
They would recharge sometimes daily.
0:28
Sometimes they had some other mechanic
0:29
that would let them recharge faster, but
0:31
in a lot of ways they were special
0:33
attacks that had special names and
0:35
unique effects and stuff that felt kind
0:38
of in line with other Marshall
0:40
characters, but they had very specific
0:42
effects and again worked a lot like
0:44
spells. At the time, it was a pretty
0:46
controversial book because it felt like
0:48
such a deviation from what Marshall
0:50
characters had been for years in Dn D.
0:54
But the book also came out during the
0:56
development of fourth edition D and D.
0:58
So in a lot of ways it was a weather
1:00
vein to see will these mechanics work?
1:03
Will people enjoy them? Does this work
1:06
at the table or are we going to have to
1:08
scrap this and make Fory do something
1:10
else? Fory obviously leaned into the
1:12
same concept where all of the Marshall's
1:14
special abilities looked and worked very
1:16
much like spells, which like we're not
1:19
here to poo poo Fory. That's not what
1:21
this video is about. But there are a lot
1:23
of people who look back fondly on Book
1:25
of Nine Swords because it offered
1:27
something different, because it offered
1:29
buttons for Marshall characters to push
1:31
beyond I stab a dude. Now, we don't have
1:35
something equivalent really in the 2014
1:38
or 2024 5e rules. The closest that we
1:41
really have is maybe the cy warrior, but
1:45
definitely the battlem. like the battlem
1:47
is very much the inheritor of those
1:50
special attacks from Book of Nine Swords
1:53
and from fourth edition. So, I don't
1:55
think we're ever going to see Book of
1:57
Nine Swords come back. We're probably
1:59
not going to see those like Marshall
2:01
initiator characters the same way that
2:03
we had them at the end of 35, but I
2:06
understand why people liked them because
2:08
it just gave Marshall characters buttons
2:10
to push beyond just trading hit points.
2:13
Why you like this?
#Roleplaying Games