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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arkhandus" data-source="post: 3580319" data-attributes="member: 13966">1) Your player exploited your lack of familiarity with the Book of Nine Swords to get a magic item not normally available in the core rules or the Bo9S itself, and that item is now a problem.2) It would be less of a problem if you throw more than 1 Will-save-effect at the Swordsage per encounter (in any encounters that use spellcasters or wierd/scary monsters, like dragons or mindflayers).  Also, if they go many encounters without being forced to make any Will saves, causing them to waste that maneuver readied/known slot much of the time just hoping to exploit it.3) Keep in mind that they cannot use the Moment of Perfect Mind unless they are able to take action (not flat-footed or stunned) and remember that it uses up their only Swift action for the next round (or the current round if they haven't used any other Swift action this round).  A wizard or monster who catches them by surprise and tries to Dominate, Color Spray, or Phantasmal Killer the swordsage will not have to worry about that pesky Moment of Perfect Mind.  One other thing about that is that if they use it, they cannot use another such maneuver to boost a different save in the same round or whatnot.  Throwing monks at them may help, stunning the swordsage while allied cultists/witches/whatever attempt to mess with the swordsage's mind.  Fortitude is a swordsage's weak save.4) If you suspect the PC may be broken now, it will be worse when he later learns Greater Insightful Strike or Diamond Nightmare Blade (much higher level, though).  Insightful Strike is more decent, compared to other maneuvers, and same with Ruby Nightmare Blade and Sapphire Nightmare Blade (they're basically alright).5) Swordsages aren't so broken in general, they just have a few ways they can be broken, same as any primary spellcasting class can be broken if you really try.  Avoid giving items that boost discipline-related skills, such as Concentration, Intimidate, Jump, and suchlike.  Unfortunately some such items are already core, like the Ring of Jumping, which can be rather bad with some Tiger Claw maneuvers.  You might want to houserule that those maneuvers use only the skill ranks to modify the check (or only skill ranks and ability score modifiers), not all the normal skill modifiers.Ban or houserule a few maneuvers if you feel it necessary; the ones that change saving throws may need a limit or something, for instance, like 'up to a maximum total save bonus equal to your initiator level', so a 6th-level initiator like your group's twink would be limited to a +6 Will save from Moment of Perfect Mind until they gain more levels.  Of course, that would make it a rather worthless maneuver until upper levels, when it would eventually become decent but not that good.  You may want to ban or houserule a change to Greater Insightful Strike and Diamond Nightmare Blade, along with certain White Raven maneuvers and feats, but I dunno.  Also, don't allow the items from Book of Nine Swords that improve discipline-based abilities, I forget what the items are named or what they do exactly, but they can potentially tip the scale further away from the balance that the rest of the book achieves.This is assuming you don't want to plan any encounters around the fact that your party's swordsage can usually ace one Will save per encounter.Anyway......  Maneuvers aren't equivalent to spells.  A mid-level caster using Magic Missile is more effective than a mid-level swordsage using Burning Blade.  A Fireball is more effective than Death Mark (though potentially less effective at first against one target, until the Fireball accumulates more damage dice at middle caster levels).  Needless to say, a Phantasmal Killer, Slay Living, Finger of Death, or Disintegrate is more capable of slaying a foe than a Ruby Nightmare Blade or Greater Insightful Strike.Martial adepts can do things close to what a spellcaster can, but very little of it is useful outside of combat, and it's still a little bit or moderately less powerful (though a Strike may, potentially, do more damage against one target in some cases than an equal-level spell could, those equal-level spells would be damaging whole groups of enemies at once).Martial adepts are less effective at fighting groups of enemies than a spellcaster is.  And martial adepts are far less effective in ranged combat (often even less effective than a fighter or barbarian in ranged combat, though maybe not by much; a swordsage might be the equal of a bard when it comes to ranged combat, but without any spells to help).</blockquote>

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