Had my first session with a 16th level swordsage today in an AoW campaign. You can see the build here:
http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3297520&postcount=13
Most of the fighting was against giants and dragons, although the first fight of the day was against a marilith. That one was fun, especially when I used One With Shadow and Greater Insightful Strike to impale it on my sword for 90 points of damage. I knew I had it on the run when it put up a blade barrier between me and it.
Things kinda fell away a bit after that, though.
First impressions are that the class is very much like a monk, only with a sword instead of fists, better armour, and these new funky things called maneuvers substituting for supernatural abilities.
- MAD is alive and well, with all of Str/Dex/Wis/Con contributing to combat output.
- Cleric BAB is a major downside if you want a character who can mix it up in combat. Lower chances of hitting, reduced opportunities to Power Attack, and fewer iterative attacks all add up.
- On the upside, the class can be very survivable; I had the highest or 2nd highest AC in the party, and the best saves. There's also maneuvers to foil your opponents' attacks, and boost your saves even higher if you want to be even more untouchable. And like the monk, it's also pretty flexible out of combat, although that didn't get touched on much in this session.
Overall the class is highly dependent on maneuvers for its combat ability. The maneuvers also don't synergise well with feats (and it's not like you've got a lot of feats anyway). Nearly all of them take either a swift, standard or full-round action to use, so things like Spring Attack don't work. This was frustrating since with only 140 hp, I really didn't want to end my turn next to a pissed-off giant if possible -- and if I had taken SA, I'd have been plinking away for ~20 points of damage each round. (By comparison, the dwarf barbarian had ~+40 atk bonus when raging, 270 hp, and regularly ended fights beaten down to < 100.)
Specific observations about maneuvers (Shadow Hand/Diamond Mind/Tiger Claw):
- The maneuvers that work off skill bonuses have the potential to cause problems, given how cheap skill boosters are in RAW. The two that I used regularly were Greater Insightful Strike (2x Concentration check as damage) and Swooping Dragon Attack (Jump check to jump over target, then Fort save DC = check result to avoid being stunned). GIS is without a doubt the best strike < 9th level in the Diamond Mind discipline, if you have a Concentration boost item (mine was +10). I'd say that either 6th level is a bit low for this one, or Diamond Nightmare Blade needs to be pumped up.
- Swooping Dragon Attack is saved from being outrageously broken by the requirement to "jump over the target", which we interpreted as a high jump (DC = 4x target height). This makes jumping over big creatures pretty tough. Depending on DM interpretation, the requirement can become easy even against big targets if you have flight/air walk, or manage to get into a position high up. Against Medium targets (and some Large ones), success is trivial using just SRD equipment and spells (haste, ring of jumping).
- GIS and SDA were so much better than all my other strikes that I ended up being something of a two-trick pony. Even just normal full attacking did pitiful damage compared to what these were capable of. Heck, I was calling GIS my custom coup-de-grace after finishing off two giants with 100+ point strikes each.
- One With Shadow is very useful both as a counter and also in conjunction with big-hit strikes like GIS. Dragons have normal AC ~40 and touch AC 8, and you don't want to waste your one GIS for the fight (leaving recharging aside).
- Faking Spring Attack via Shadow Blink, Shadow Jaunt and Quicksilver Motion gets expensive in terms of maneuvers spent.
Overall, is the swordsage broken? Going from my (limited) experience, I'd say not, although it does have the opportunity to grab the spotlight now and then. Is it powerful? Your answer to that will probably match your answer to the question of whether the monk is powerful, since there's so many similarities between the two classes. I'll note that in this particular session though, the other players ended up labelling the character as a tertiary combatant, not even a secondary combatant. Maybe I'll swop her out for a warblade next session.
http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3297520&postcount=13
Most of the fighting was against giants and dragons, although the first fight of the day was against a marilith. That one was fun, especially when I used One With Shadow and Greater Insightful Strike to impale it on my sword for 90 points of damage. I knew I had it on the run when it put up a blade barrier between me and it.
Things kinda fell away a bit after that, though.First impressions are that the class is very much like a monk, only with a sword instead of fists, better armour, and these new funky things called maneuvers substituting for supernatural abilities.
- MAD is alive and well, with all of Str/Dex/Wis/Con contributing to combat output.
- Cleric BAB is a major downside if you want a character who can mix it up in combat. Lower chances of hitting, reduced opportunities to Power Attack, and fewer iterative attacks all add up.
- On the upside, the class can be very survivable; I had the highest or 2nd highest AC in the party, and the best saves. There's also maneuvers to foil your opponents' attacks, and boost your saves even higher if you want to be even more untouchable. And like the monk, it's also pretty flexible out of combat, although that didn't get touched on much in this session.
Overall the class is highly dependent on maneuvers for its combat ability. The maneuvers also don't synergise well with feats (and it's not like you've got a lot of feats anyway). Nearly all of them take either a swift, standard or full-round action to use, so things like Spring Attack don't work. This was frustrating since with only 140 hp, I really didn't want to end my turn next to a pissed-off giant if possible -- and if I had taken SA, I'd have been plinking away for ~20 points of damage each round. (By comparison, the dwarf barbarian had ~+40 atk bonus when raging, 270 hp, and regularly ended fights beaten down to < 100.)
Specific observations about maneuvers (Shadow Hand/Diamond Mind/Tiger Claw):
- The maneuvers that work off skill bonuses have the potential to cause problems, given how cheap skill boosters are in RAW. The two that I used regularly were Greater Insightful Strike (2x Concentration check as damage) and Swooping Dragon Attack (Jump check to jump over target, then Fort save DC = check result to avoid being stunned). GIS is without a doubt the best strike < 9th level in the Diamond Mind discipline, if you have a Concentration boost item (mine was +10). I'd say that either 6th level is a bit low for this one, or Diamond Nightmare Blade needs to be pumped up.
- Swooping Dragon Attack is saved from being outrageously broken by the requirement to "jump over the target", which we interpreted as a high jump (DC = 4x target height). This makes jumping over big creatures pretty tough. Depending on DM interpretation, the requirement can become easy even against big targets if you have flight/air walk, or manage to get into a position high up. Against Medium targets (and some Large ones), success is trivial using just SRD equipment and spells (haste, ring of jumping).
- GIS and SDA were so much better than all my other strikes that I ended up being something of a two-trick pony. Even just normal full attacking did pitiful damage compared to what these were capable of. Heck, I was calling GIS my custom coup-de-grace after finishing off two giants with 100+ point strikes each.
- One With Shadow is very useful both as a counter and also in conjunction with big-hit strikes like GIS. Dragons have normal AC ~40 and touch AC 8, and you don't want to waste your one GIS for the fight (leaving recharging aside).
- Faking Spring Attack via Shadow Blink, Shadow Jaunt and Quicksilver Motion gets expensive in terms of maneuvers spent.
Overall, is the swordsage broken? Going from my (limited) experience, I'd say not, although it does have the opportunity to grab the spotlight now and then. Is it powerful? Your answer to that will probably match your answer to the question of whether the monk is powerful, since there's so many similarities between the two classes. I'll note that in this particular session though, the other players ended up labelling the character as a tertiary combatant, not even a secondary combatant. Maybe I'll swop her out for a warblade next session.
