I felt that there was plenty of wiggle room for neat abilities and maybe a little bit of beefing up, cutting things that were a little unnecessary, etc. Over in the other thread (Classes and Prestige Classes), a lot of people didn't really take my Gladiator as a remake because they had never seen it before and I got a lot of criticism that wasn't "remake" driven but "custom design" driven, so, I look forward to what I expect to be more informed opinions.
This class remake is still under construction, but mostly done... Go ahead and PEACH (Please Evaluate and Critique Honestly)
I was interested in the original version of the Gladiator, at first, but then realized that many of their class abilities were the same things over and over again and way too many were just feats. I decided to try to give them more and more useful abilities and hopefully make the experience of playing one a bit more enjoyable for the player. Off the bat, I'll say one of the things that I added was a little ToB... so... if you're not for that at all, sorry, but I like what it can do for their options and flavor. Bear with me, though, that's not the only change I made, and in fact, the class can almost be highly playable without it, so I'm thinking about writing a variant with some other powerful enough class feature to counterbalance a loss of the ToB options (perhaps some Psionic Warrior-ish powers?).
Gladiator
image by Abrar Jamal, from http://www.epilogue.net/cgi/database/art/view.pl?id=69803
"Hear the crowd...outside the arena, I am only a man... but within those bloodstained walls... I am... a legacy!" -- Kravius, a human Gladiator after single-handedly defeating a Greathorn Minotaur.
General description...
Making a Gladiator
Abilities: .
Races: .
Alignment: Any. Gladiators run the gamut of personalities and principles.
Starting Gold: 6d4 x 10 (150 gp)
Starting Age: As fighter.
Hit Dice: d12
Off the bat, I'll say one of the things that I added was a little ToB... so... if you're not for that at all, sorry, but I like what it can do for their options and flavor.
Ok. As you have already admited, your Gladiator version is strongly inspired in athas.org version merged with Tome of Battle mechanics.
Sorry but, since I don´t like the Tome of Battle mechanics of stances, maneuvers, etc., I cannot help providing feedback to your gladiator version, for obvious reasons.
In the other hand, if you want to see another alternative version of the gladiator, but without ToB mechanics, take a look at:
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=739193&page=4&highlight=gladiator
Sorry but, since I don´t like the Tome of Battle mechanics of stances, maneuvers, etc., I cannot help providing feedback to your gladiator version, for obvious reasons.
Hmm... okay, thanks for the link. Actually, a lot of that discussed in that thread seems to go along the same lines of the other changes I made to the class. As far as the ToB goes, I gave it less than any ToB class would have available, so that's not this Gladiator's main thing or anything. I also made changes to Armor Optimization, Arena Guile, a new ability called "Are You Not Entertained?," moved things around hoping to make it more evenly distributed across the levels. Also, I do have some path concepts that I've considered implementing. I haven't put those in yet because I'm just testing the waters in this forum right now. I wasn't sure if people would tell me that this was the wrong forum for this sort of thread. If you don't care to comment on any of the ToB stuff that's absolutely fine, but set apart from that what do you think of the other changes? You should be easily able to skip over all the Stance/Maneuver etc. sections because none of those tie into the other abilities, the ToB stuff and the other class abilities literally don't have any cross-over with each other.
P.S. to all - If you or anyone else does know about ToB enough to make an educated assessment anyway, I am not using exactly the same mechanics for actual use of the maneuvers that any current ToB class has, I made up my own that I think fits the concept of a Gladiator. I've been told that it's the best/most logical mechanic that one person has ever heard of for a martial adept and I've been told that my capstone is a commendable rendition of an ability that one person has never seen made as balanced as mine. Also, again, I didn't give them many maneuvers... it's really only a hint of ToB, just enough to give them some extra neat options in combat and help with what flavor Gladiator you're trying to be, not meant to be their meat and potatoes.
Also, I have playtested the class once and the player had a ton of fun playing it. He always had something to do and several options, if he wanted, but he didn't seem to be overpowered either. Unfortunately, he didn't put any ranks in Bluff and never used Feint so, I have no idea how that would work in gameplay with the lower bonus that my version has. If anyone wants to playtest it, feel free. I only beg that you give me (even an informal) playtest report. Was it fun? Did it seem balanced? Did my rules seem to make sense, etc?