What, If Anything, Might be Wrong with the Warblade?

[brehobit]

Never having seen any of the BO9S in play can't say about brokeneness or anything, but it looks broken from a "fun perspective" compared to other fighting classes.

Fighters fight, Barbs fight, its what they do. But the warblade gets good hitdice, good BAB, but has a lot of "fun things" a caster can do. They can heal, and do area damage and sometimes move extra around the battlefield and so on. I don't think a player playing a pally, barb, or ranger could feel good watching this guy do about as much damage as them but get to do all the fun stuff as well.

I *love* the Bo9S for the fun. Things get repetitive in actual play, which kinda sucks. But making characters like this is great fun.

Mark

 

[DungeonMaester]

My beef with the Warblade is three-fold.

1: It looks like it was designed by the dm's kid brother with the sole intent of being "uber"

2: The flavor text behind it is just garbage. "Hi, I love violence because I'm good at it because I love it!"

3: It was asinine to give it another classes features, by which I am specifically referring to fighter bonus feats. It'd be like making another core class with all the stats of a barbarian, only with a slew of other features and a stance progression tacked on.

I should state that I actually like the Bo9S classes and the maneuver/stance progression in general.

I agree. Fighter bonus feats a magic powers that for the most part match a spell caster that they can use almost as much as a warlock? No.

On the other hand, most of what D&D has put out is just powergaming. The next book will be 'Complete Gestalt with no Dead levels!'

---Rusty

 

[Rystil Arden]

In the party I DM, we've got a WB/Mnk, who just got Insightful Strike. He's maxed out his Con and Concentration check, so he's doing 1d20+21 hp of damage per round at level 6.

I have a feeling that the manuevers that base effects off of a skill check aren't just problematic....they're very problematic, and just scream "maximize!".

Oh, they're very problematic indeed. In fact, I've banned LDA. As to the Concentration check, if he was only doing 1d20+21 at level 6 and you think *that's* bad, well, I dunno. 21 is not really that high for Concentration at level 6, although I guess it is if you don't allow +skill check items (which is a great way to help keep those maoeuvres less crazy). The real trick is doing 1d20+upper 20s (possibly 30s with a bit of buffing) at level 5, before iteratives kick in. I honestly can't think of any other simple way to do that much damage at that level, including Sudden Metamagic feats.

Leaping Dragon Attack is a much worse offender though--more damage than anyone else can do for a few levels is one thing, but an unsavable stun is something else entirely.

 

[Stalker0]

I *love* the Bo9S for the fun. Things get repetitive in actual play, which kinda sucks. But making characters like this is great fun.

Mark

Don't get me wrong, I think the B09S is a great idea, and is definately a direction the game should take because the classes are more fun. But if you have people who are in the old classes, I think it will be unfair to them.

 

[Patlin]

For the record, I'm the GM of a Warblade that's been playing it for about half a year now. I went into it very reluctantly. I don't like the Warblade. I felt the class was overpowered. I don't like the mechanics of the Warblade. (If it's magical--and face it, the maneuvers are--then it's NOT a pure tank class, dammit! Don't call it one!) I let the player give it a try because I could have been wrong, he really wanted to play it, and we have a solid GM/Player relationship based on some trust. If it didn't work out, I knew we'd be able to work out an acceptable compromise.

I have this image of myself over the past five months or so, crouched over the PC like a cat over a mousehole, waiting for the moment when I can pounce and say "SEE?!? Clearly overpowered!!!!"

I'm still waiting.

I'm still not entirely convinced the Warblade is a balanced class. I still don't like the mechanics of it. But I *have* decided it's not extremely overpowered; if I do finally decide it needs fixing, I'll likely change some of the class features rather than ban it outright. For example, I have already removed the "free action recharge" entirely, since the maneuvers renew each combat anyways. (The player had never even used the ability before then.)

YMMV, but I went into this *expecting* the Warblade to prove obviously overpowered. Almost *wanting* it to be (everyone wants to be proven right, after all : ). It hasn't happened.

(As an aside, the other PCs are a Duskblade, Beguiler, spellcasting-centric Cleric, and Artificer. So that may have skewed the results. Take that however you wish...)

We're starting to build a campaign now with what we are calling the "Aura Party." The idea is that almost every PC boosts the other PCs abilities in some meaningfull way. It's shaping up to be a Warblade, Divine Mind, Dragon Shaman, Duskblade, and melee-centric Artificer. Not much healing or blasting, but a lot of melee. (We've been on a kick of trying campaigns with horribly unbalanced groups, one of our other recent campaigns was 'all arcane casters or psions.') I'm not sure the Duskblade really fits the theme, but we've got a player who really wants to try it out. White Raven maneuvers and Divine Mind Boosts together... might even be worth not having a healer!

 

[Feldspar]

At level 6, you end up starting to pay for using strikes by turning away your full attack.

Yes, but on the other hand, being able to do a lot with just one attack has a value of its own. For example, our melee focused pure fighter was jealous of the damage that my cleric archer did - and it had nothing to do with self buffs. The way the rest of the party saw it, my big advantage was that I almost always got to take full attacks (with rapid shot) while he frequently had to chase the battle around and often had to settle for one attack per round.

Being able to move *and* deal serious damage in the same round is good thing.

 

[Plane Sailing]

(We've been on a kick of trying campaigns with horribly unbalanced groups, one of our other recent campaigns was 'all arcane casters or psions.')

Off topic, but we had a campaign that started with the following five characters.

18 Str Ranger (bow user)
18 Str Paladin with fullblade
18 Str Fighter with greataxe
18 Str Monk with Glaive
Sorcerer with no useful spells

We were astonishingly effective against any foes which could be faced in melee...

 

[Fedifensor]

You might find useful and information additional information in these threads from last year:

Don't forget this one:

Characters - Warblade and Swordsage: Overpowered?

 

[Nail]

21 is not really that high for Concentration at level 6, although I guess it is if you don't allow +skill check items (which is a great way to help keep those maoeuvres less crazy).

There are NO "skill check" magic items in my game.

That 1d20+21 is pretty darn good considering I don't allow any splatbook magic items.

 

[Nail]

Don't forget this one:

Characters - Warblade and Swordsage: Overpowered?

True.

When I started that thread, I said I'd "try it out". I'm in the process of that right now. There's no question the Warblade has been fun....to argue about.