I have a quick question on this. I may be misreading it, but I think the amount of attacks you quoted isn't accurate. According to what I'm reading for Perfect Assault it says " When you activate this maneuver, you take the Attack action and make two weapon attacks, as well as double the number of additional attacks granted by Extra Attack." A 1st Fighter/19th Herald would only have 1 Extra attack (gained at Herald 5th) since only Fighter/Marshals stack for extra attacks. Based on that shouldn't it be a total of 4 attacks (2 base plus double the extra attack) or am I missing something else?
i don't think that reading makes sense, because what you've described is just equivalent to "you take the Attack action and make twice the number of attacks you can make on a turn" (or even just straight up "you take the Attack action twice") - anyone that gets a total of 2 attacks would make 4 attacks, and anyone that gets a total of 3 attacks would get 6. if your reading is correct, then it's literally the most convoluted manner they could have possibly written it (i mean, someone could probably think of a phrasing more convoluted, but that's besides the point). also remember that extra attack reads as "you can attack twice instead of once" (and for third attack "The number of attacks increases to three") - extra attack doesn't actually really grant "an extra attack", it grants the ability to attack twice (and later for fighters/marshals/probably most adepts thrice) instead of once. AAAND i just remembered this is the same phrasing as every other maneuver that lets you extra attack. OOPS.
like you said, though, either way it's busted. although with
your THE CORRECT reading it'd be a lot easier for a herald to get most of their attacks replaced with other maneuvers while still getting all their perfect assaults off just because of how ratios work, haha
actually, let me go at some quick math with that - so, let's assume we replace each attack with a maneuver that requires 2 exertion. perfect assault costs 3. that means each turn, to replace all your attacks with a maneuver, assuming it is supposed to be basically the attack action twice, that'd be 3+(2*4) or 11 exertion a turn. with a fighter's exertion pool, the first turn we can pull that off easily. with herald 19, the next two turns we can basically guarantee that by spending a level 5 (5*2) and level 1 (1*2) slot for each of those turns (there seems to be no limit on the number of spell slots a herald can spend on the start of their turn to recover exertion). then the last 3 turns we can manage the same with a 4th (4*2) and 2nd (2*2) slot. so, replacing every attack with a maneuver should be fine.
wagain, all this math is assuming each maneuver aside from perfect assault is 2 exertion. maneuver specialization is at fighter 3, but herald doesn't get 2 5th level slots until level 19, so i don't think 1 less exertion for mastered maneuvers is worth the lost 5th level slot. if you plan to only use a 2 exertion maneuver for your perfect assaults, reducing that maneuver to 1 exertion is probably worth it, because you're reducing the exertion per turn needed from 11 to 7, which is pretty huge if you want to cast spells.
Another possible fix: Maneuver tables all progress separately, similar to Pact Magic and regular Spellcasting. You can pick up more low-level maneuvers when you multiclass, but not higher ones.
that doesn't feel great, but it's probably the fix that requires the least amount of work, so i guess it could work.