Making Sense of the Warblade

So I think the warblade (from the "Tome of Battle") is a pretty crazy class. In fact, one of the craziest things about it is its name, which impressively manages to be simultaneously uninformative (no, we're different than all those people who use their blades for peace) and trite, in sort of a munchkiny, inner-twelve-year-old sense. To make matters worse, it's sort of flavorless (how are warblades supposed to be thematically different from fighters who just really like fighting? What coherent fantasy archetype or niche do they fill?) and prima facie overpowered. Moreover, I bet you (if you've looked at that book) feel more or less the same way I do.

On the other hand, I'm sort of taken with it, because it provides a nice way to for characters to use the martial maneuvers without the mystical trappings of the swordsage or crusader. I want to fix it. Moreover, I'm betting I can fix it such a way that solves all of these problems in a neat, unified way. Here's how.

1. Change the class's name to weapon master. (The warblade is now a character who "dedicates herself to mastery of a particular melee weapon.") Note that all further references here will be to the "weapon master," not to the "warblade."
   
2. Reduce the class's hit die to d10.
   
3. Require the class to designate a favored weapon at first level. The character may only use the strikes and counters she learns and readies as a weapon master with her favored weapon. In addition, the battle ardor, battle cunning, and battle mastery abilities only apply to her favored weapon.
   
4. The weapon aptitude ability only applies to the weapon master's favored weapon. (She can only take the fighter-specific feats with weapon she chooses.) Because a weapon master can't change the weapon she takes this feat with, she can't (unlike the warblade) select different weapons with weapon aptitude.
   
5. Here is the big change, loosely based on the token rules from Iron Heroes. Weapon masters power their abilities with tactical points. Tactical points measure a combination of adrenaline and poise that the weapon master gains from forethought and preparation and improves as she participates in combat and adjusts to the actions of her enemies. Because a weapon master requires tactical points to be effective, and because she gains tactical points by being attacked, weapon masters tend to seek out the most dangerous parts of a battlefield. They like to be in the thick of things.
   
   Here are the mechanics. At the beginning of an encounter, a weapon master gets a number of tactical points equal to her Intelligence bonus or half her class level, whichever is lower. (First-level weapon masters, or those without Intelligence bonuses, start encounters without any tactical points.) Each time that the weapon master is attacked, the weapon master gains a tactical point (regardless of whether the attack hits or misses). Any offensive action that requires an attack roll counts as an attack for purposes of this ability. Starting at 8th level, a weapon master gets two tactical points every time she's attacked. Starting at 14th level, she gets three points.
   
   Whenever the weapon master wants to initiate a maneuver that she's readied as a weapon master, she must expend a number of tactical points equal to the maneuver's level.
   
6. Finally, weapon masters recover expended maneuvers in a slightly different way. A weapon master recovers a maneuver as a free action (rather than a swift action), and doesn't need to make a melee attack or anything like that. However, in order to recover a maneuver, she must expend tactical points equal to the maneuver's level. (Thus, in order to use a 4th level maneuver and then recover it in the same round, a weapon master must spend 8 tactical points.)

Tell me what you think. If you're curious, and you think these changes are neither really silly nor completely intuitive, I'd be happy to discuss the rationale in a future post. For the moment, though, I want to go to sleep.

Ow, the nerf stick.

Now it's just a Psychic Warrior with better BAB.

Kmart Kommando said:

Ow, the nerf stick.

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If there was ever justification to apply a stick with the munchkin-bane property to a base class, the warblade is it.

Now it's just a Psychic Warrior with better BAB.

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Ah, so now it's "just" a little better than another base class. Pure travesty.

Felon said:

If there was ever justification to apply a stick with the munchkin-bane property to a base class, the warblade is it.

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I totally agree. But do you think it goes far enough?

Basically, the idea behind the "weapon master" stuff is to give the class a bit more flavor and direction. The idea behind the tactical points is to force the class into making more difficult tactical decisions and limit the applicability of the martial maneuvers, while still being generous enough with the points so that they figure into encounters fairly readily. I'm hoping to create an interesting (if, given IH, not especially original) twist on the encounter-based mechanics in ToB--the class's main resource refreshes every encounter, but, unlike any other class in the game, warblades/weapon masters have relatively limited control over that resource: they need to really be in the thick of things in order to get the resources to use their abilities liberally. (Note that this is actually very different from the psychic warrior, whose resources are drawn from a daily pool and whose power mostly comes from buffs--ideally applied at the beginning of a fight, or moments before it--enhanced by the occasional psychically-boosted attack or special maneuver.)

(And more feedback would be super helpful. I'm actually suspecting that I still might be too generous.)

Oh God, it's a dragon! Quick, have the Wizard summon goblins to attack me!

Felon said:

Ah, so now it's "just" a little better than another base class. Pure travesty.

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A Psychic Warrior with maneuvers? I'll take it.

You can just use the new martial adepts and play Iron Heroes D&D.
Unlike Iron Heroes' 15 -uhh- thousand fighter classes, you have 3 that are customizable to your tastes.

Sometimes I miss Vigor when the foes are raining down death on my Swordsage.

Kisanji Arael said:

Oh God, it's a dragon! Quick, have the Wizard summon goblins to attack me!

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Right, yes, good point. I'm not sure if there's a way to fix this in any sort of interesting way. (For the time being, I'm perfectly happy to declare the warblade beyond all hope. Maybe the best fix is just to drop the BAB and hit dice to swordsage levels, like someone on the rules boards suggested.)

Humm, I would simply reduce the die type to a d8 and give them the same maneuver recovery as the swordsage (ie a full round action) while retaining a full BAB. This nerf makes the warblade perfectly fine imho. I still can not understand how they thought a intelligence based fighter needed a d12.

Battle ardor, Battle cunning, and Battle mastery are on the same power level as the respective feats. Weapon aptitude with its ability to change weapon (focus/spec) is either great or meh depending upon the campaign. In ours, the ability is meh.

I always recommend using a light hand and making as few changes as possible.

What are the goals of your rebuild? IMO the ToB classes are excellent for high level melees but they are unbalanced at low to mid levels where they outshine fighters, barbarians, and casters. Excluding maneuvers, the class features are reasonable if you believe the warblade is the classic example of the "warrior philosopher" who actively uses their knowledge and intellect to find weaknesses in their opponent's style.

IMO the trick is to keep the same upper power level but keep them from dominating at levels 1-12. I would actually have them start at 1st level with all of 1 maneuver. IMO a stance is as good as a feat so they are on par with fighters and have an every-other-round stunt. They can always burn feats (and they get some bonus feats) on Martial Knowledge/Stance. have the number of maneuvers increase every other level (aiming for the levels where no class feature is provided) until they hit around 12th level. Then accelerate their maneuver progression until they hit their normal max at 20th level.

This gives a reasonable progression of combat stunts (pretty much one shiny thing per level), makes the fighter's general purpose feats remain relevant, doesn't completely make the casters look like drek at low levels, and still gives them plenty of oomph when they start meeting those CRs in the teens. They still outclass fighters but only at the high levels, which is where most fighters go into a PrC anyway. I figure at low levels the odds of useful maneuvers is the same as having useful feats.

Of course, if you disagree with my intent you won't agree with my design.

Why mess with them at all? If you think fighters suck, dump them and make the new martial adepts the fighter classes. Casters not dominating the battlefield? Then your players are doing something wrong. My swordsage can pump out the single target damage, but the 4 casters in the party can do well over half that amount, to nearly every target on the field at the same time, so somewhere around 200-300% of my damage per round. The only thing that keeps me alive? Battlefield control from the casters, heals from the Healer (we don't have a cleric).
The other frontline fighter is a polymorphing dwarf wizard, who can almost keep up with me in damage, and can get away much quicker than I can. If he took Power Attack, he'd pass me up every round he cast Wraithstrike. (Which would be damn near every round if he didn't save half of his spells for getaway spells, but he doesn't listen)
We have other frontline fighter-types, but they are more of a 5 times per day kind of one-hit wonders.