Remind me which were the b0rken White Raven maneuvers again?

[hong]

I've got a player who's taking a dwarf crusader in my upcoming game. This is actually a fairly cool character but I recall a lot of talk about how some of the WR maneuvers were broken, or at least should be watched closely. Can anyone remind me what they were?

 

[Rystil Arden]

I've got a player who's taking a dwarf crusader in my upcoming game. This is actually a fairly cool character but I recall a lot of talk about how some of the WR maneuvers were broken, or at least should be watched closely. Can anyone remind me what they were?

Tactics has a brokenness level that is actually more than linear in the number of people who have it. With one person, it is an extremely powerful gambit. With two or more, it becomes ridiculous. The two general breaks for it are "Let's both take turns" and "Pile-up on the Nova Specialist". For the first one, two or more characters with WRT each use it on each other to get two turns each per round. For the second, everybody in the party except the Nova Specialist takes WRT and they all use it on the Nova Specialist, giving her a number of turns equal to the number of people in the party (plus they all take their turns too, of course), which is pretty much an auto-win if your Nova Specialist is any good at Nova-ing.

You probably won't have to worry about it for a while, but Warmaster's Charge is also problematic, and extremely so if you have a lot of people around in the group. Massive damage that auto-hits (even if you Power Attack in most cases), bringing everybody next to the enemy without expending their turn so they can full attack, and an auto-stun with no save is ridiculously much to give. If you get to use it against an opponent, even an overwhelming opponent like a Titan, you automatically win (if it has the HP of a Great Wyrm and is immune to stun, then you have a chance of not winning depending on the strength of your allies and the enemy's ability to flee you).

The other powers are extremely useful and powerful and will make the party fearsome, but they aren't game-breakers. For all the Charge manoeuvres (but especially Warmaster's Charge if you don't nerf or remove it) beware the synergy with Charge-pumping abilities and Pounce-granting abilities.

 

[hong]

Those were the ones I had a vague recollection of, yeah. There's only 2 other PCs (a gnome wiz and something else), and neither player is really that much of a powergamer so exponential brokenness probably won't be a huge issue.

For Warmaster's Charge, how does prior movement in the round figure into it? From the description it seems that everyone within 30' can charge even if they've already moved -- or if their turn hasn't come up yet, it doesn't impact their ability to move later in the round.

That wacky Mearls, still tinkering with Iron Heroes!

 

[Rystil Arden]

Those were the ones I had a vague recollection of, yeah. There's only 2 other PCs (a gnome wiz and something else), and neither player is really that much of a powergamer so exponential brokenness probably won't be a huge issue.

For Warmaster's Charge, how does prior movement in the round figure into it? From the description it seems that everyone within 30' can charge even if they've already moved -- or if their turn hasn't come up yet, it doesn't impact their ability to move later in the round.

That wacky Mearls, still tinkering with Iron Heroes!

For Warmaster's Charge, prior movement matters naught. If they didn't use a Swift action and thus have an Immediate action ready, they can all go. And then if they happened to have been delaying until after you did this (or just have lower initiative), they can all Full Attack immediately afterwards, or coup-de-grace the now-stunned enemy.

 

[hong]

You can't coup de grace a stunned opponent Yeah, that's just a wild maneuver. Just giving everyone a free charge would be awesome, but stunning the enemy into the bargain? It almost makes me feel not guilty about using blasphemy!

 

[starwed]

It is a ninth level maneuver though; it's supposed to be awesome.

WRT is probably ok as long as you just say no to cheese. The uses of it which are broken are pretty obviously broken, and simply forbidding it to be used more than once on a target per combat cycle is enough to prevent anything overpowered. But feel free to forbid it; anything messing with initiative order is something I don't really like the smell of.

 

[Elethiomel]

For Warmaster's Charge, prior movement matters naught. If they didn't use a Swift action and thus have an Immediate action ready, they can all go. And then if they happened to have been delaying until after you did this (or just have lower initiative), they can all Full Attack immediately afterwards, or coup-de-grace the now-stunned enemy.

AFAIK, an Immediate action takes your next swift action, not your previous one.

 

[jasin]

IIRC, immediate actions are wacky that way: if you use them on your turn, they use up your swift action, but if not, they use up your next swift action.

So you could do swift, full-round, (end turn), immediate (it eats up your next turn's swift); but not immediate, swift, full-round (since the immediate eats up your swift action for this turn).

Or something like that.

 

[brehobit]

It is a ninth level maneuver though; it's supposed to be awesome.

Yeah, but with a little prep it can be used to kill nearly anything. Huge baddies are really easy to take out (Even CR 30+) with a summoning druid and warmaster's charge.

Past that, there are a few higher-level maneuvers that allow auto-stun (no save, no SR, just have to hit). This, IMO, is pretty broken.

Mark

 

[Seeten]

Those were the ones I had a vague recollection of, yeah. There's only 2 other PCs (a gnome wiz and something else), and neither player is really that much of a powergamer so exponential brokenness probably won't be a huge issue.

For Warmaster's Charge, how does prior movement in the round figure into it? From the description it seems that everyone within 30' can charge even if they've already moved -- or if their turn hasn't come up yet, it doesn't impact their ability to move later in the round.

That wacky Mearls, still tinkering with Iron Heroes!

9th level maneuvers are allowed to be ridiculous IMG. Seeing as they compete with Wish, Miracle, and Time Stop.