The Sage on White Raven Tactics

[Patlin]

It isn't imaginary though. There's a single-sided infinity stretching out never-endingly into the future at the discontinuity where the old round ends.

For almost all purposes, there is no relevance to the end of a round or the beginning of a round. A round can be a segment of game time starting with the first character to act and ending with the last, but it usually means a span of time from one round to the same initiative count in the next round. Effects that last a certain number of rounds end just before the same initiative count that they began on.

While both quotes are correct, I find them interesting to consider together.

All I can tell you from actual play experience is that WRT works fine with one martial adept in the party, or at least seems to. If we want a more baanced view, though, we need to have some DMs use it against the party and see what happens.

 

[Brian Gibbons]

The biggest problem, in my opinion, when it comes to haste-like effects for spellcasters, allowing them to unload most if not all of their spells very quickly, is the fact, that once the spellcasters have done this, and are low on spells, the party mostly wants to withdraw and rest.

I don't quite understand the problem with WRT. It strikes me as far more effective for NPCs than it is for PCs.

One PC being able to cast multiple times in a round is impressive, but by and large, the PCs are going to win most combats by definition. All this does is speed things up.

Teaming the BBEG caster with a bunch of low-level minions who know WRT, however, makes a big difference in the fight. One 11th level caster, surrounded by eight 5th level crusaders or warblades, is only an EL 13 encounter, but that's going to be a very unpleasant first round of combat. Since it's unlikely the BBEG is going to be fighting more than that one combat that day, it doesn't matter if she unloads everything in her arsenal in two rounds.

This seems tailor-made for a "If the PCs open the can of worms, the NPCs will too" sort of deal.

 

[Rystil Arden]

So, for some people the main reason that the ability is too strong is because the initiative order scales to infinity and negative infinity?

Since the initiative order is there merely to be cyclical in nature and not indicative of the real world why not just have everyone roll initiative, have their comparitive results, and then be placed in that order ignoring the actual scores from then on. If a new combatant comes in you can look at all of the scores and such, it should not be a problem.

When White Raven Tactics is used it moves one character within 10 feet of the initiator to the initiative slot below theirs and is treated as being tied with the next person below them in the cycle but with the new person winning a tie. That way the ability will do nothing without some delaying tactics along with the sacrifice in other options and it will cycle through the initiative order automatically.

So you're going to rewrite the entire initiative rules for WRT? Eh, I think that's fixing the wrong part of the equation here

 

[Rystil Arden]

While both quotes are correct, I find them interesting to consider together.

All I can tell you from actual play experience is that WRT works fine with one martial adept in the party, or at least seems to. If we want a more baanced view, though, we need to have some DMs use it against the party and see what happens.

I've done that. For the right NPC group, the party automatically dies every time.

 

[Marshall]

It seems to me that WRT creates a temporal anomaly that sucks the entire game into oblivion.

Seriously, the easy fix is to read the feat to only allow you to pull an ally up in the initiative order. If you've already used your actions for the round they should stay spent.
You could argue that you are being pulled up from the next round, but once you do that you are still out of actions to pull ahead from for a second use of WRT.
Isnt this the same issue that the celerity line of spells in the SC has?

 

[Patlin]

I've done that. For the right NPC group, the party automatically dies every time.

What's the right NPC group? Two Level 6 human warblades would be an EL 8 encounter. Are you finding they will regularly kill a party of 4 level 8 players? In other words, how serious have you found the problem to be?

 

[Rystil Arden]

What's the right NPC group? Two Level 6 human warblades would be an EL 8 encounter. Are you finding they will regularly kill a party of 4 level 8 players? In other words, how serious have you found the problem to be?

The right NPC group--a Fang Dragon (known as 'The Blade Dragon'), an albino Jade Phoenix Mage (known as 'The White Raven') and her disciples, a large group of 5th-level mook Warblades. This setup consistently destroyed a group of fairly maximised appropriate-leveled PCs in multiple playtests. The idea is that whenever any Warblade acts, it lets WR also act, and she uses a 15d6 Empowered Fireball (or a 15d6 Fire-subbed Cone of Cold if the enemies are in range for that and she's in the Phoenix Stance) or an 18d6 in 3 supplements Empowered Scorching Ray. There are, if I recall, around 8 of the minions, which is just about the right amount that she'll drain herself of her top spells and maybe have to consider using a regular 10d6 Fireball later on, though most of her 3rd-level slots are Dispel Magics to deal with any magical protections the group might have against fire, which she can see with her Permanent Arcane Sight--she's got plenty of actions to remove said protections. The Fang Dragon has already been protected against Fire, so it has no fear about wading into melee. WR will save her Swift action until her first action after the dragon already acted, and she'll use that one to use a WRT of her own on the Dragon. She can do this because she spent a feat to add in WRT (she has the right initiator level, but she can't add WR manoeuvres with JPM levels). Ideally, this means the Dragon will be guaranteed to be in a spot for a full attack on the second full-round action, and as you may know, Fang Dragons have a particularly deadly Full Attack. I could have made it a Red Dragon to stay on the fire theme, but that seemed putting too many eggs in one basket. Speaking of which, she can of course have several non-fire spells up her sleeve just in case, but she won't need them unless the PCs are somehow immune in a way that can't be Dispelled.

On average, she can dish out 45d6 Area Damage and 90d6 single-target damage on the first round, plus the Dragons two full-round actions and whatever else the Warblades do. If she manages to win Initiative, she will do a bit more. It may also be worth it to invest in a staff for her, though I didn't find it necessary. Her caster level with fire spells is 15, so she could profitably use a Delayed Blast Fireball staff. The staff could also hold non-fire spells if the party is particularly fire-protected. The EL guidelines claim that the 8 Warblades (EL 11) plus the JPM (EL 12) plus the Dragon (also 11 or 12, I can't remember) are about an EL 15 encounter. This encounter can destroy parties of very high levels.

 

[Patlin]

Yes, that's very nasty. With a single warblade PC in a level 6 to 10 campaign, it didn't seem broken. With 8 'mooks' using WRT on their master, that's a heck of a bad scene.

In order to do so, though, they all need to be within 10' of the master. If an invisible (or by some other tactic gaining surprise or initiative) 15th level wizard came upon them, a maximized cone of cold would turn this from a deadly encounter into a fairly trivial one -- all the mooks would be dead even if they made their saves, assuming a con score of 12 and average hp, and you might even take out one of the masters.

I won't contest though, that setup will kill of most parties of reasonable level most of the time. It's a bit of a corner case though... a large number of arbitrarilly low level mooks using the ability. Have you tried it with two to four NPCs of the parties level or under?

 

[Rystil Arden]

Yes, that's very nasty. With a single warblade PC in a level 6 to 10 campaign, it didn't seem broken. With 8 'mooks' using WRT on their master, that's a heck of a bad scene.

In order to do so, though, they all need to be within 10' of the master. If an invisible (or by some other tactic gaining surprise or initiative) 15th level wizard came upon them, a maximized cone of cold would turn this from a deadly encounter into a fairly trivial one -- all the mooks would be dead even if they made their saves, assuming a con score of 12 and average hp, and you might even take out one of the masters.

I won't contest though, that setup will kill of most parties of reasonable level most of the time. It's a bit of a corner case though... a large number of arbitrarilly low level mooks using the ability. Have you tried it with two to four NPCs of the parties level or under?

It's very difficult to gain surprise against the Fang Dragon's Blindsense. I mean, you can assume Scry + Buff + Teleport, but then you can always assume that. The mooks and such were mass-protected from Fire and Cold (Fire to protect against friendly fire and Cold because it seems natural to use against a Fire-based foe), but any sort of Energy-Substitution will take care of it. Then again, the chances of having an Energy Sub (not Fire or Cold) Maximised Cone of Cold seem low. Also, note that if not surprised, all of them, even the JPM, have the 1st-level Warblade ability to add Int to Ref saves. For the JPM, this is especially huge. I'd imagine that if you gave the mooks 2 Monk levels for Evasion, that would also help their AoE survivability.

But as I said, I did tell you the 'right NPC group'--you had to expect it was optimised for that

At lower levels, a group made up of two Kineticists and two Warblades proved able to beat a better-equipped group of 4 higher-level PCs. Specifically, 6th or 7th-level party (with all the equipment thereof) versus 5th-level NPCs is a big win for the NPCs. The goal here is to blast the PCs 4 times in the first round for 6d6+6 damage each with Energy Missile, netting 108 Damage, save for half (they use Fire on heavy-armoured guys and Cold on Monk/Rogue guys, avoiding that nasty Evasion). If they save every time, they still take 54, which will defeat pretty much anything up to the d6 HD guys for sure (even with 16 Con, which I think is an overestimate, the d6 HD guys average to 51 at level 6). This is nearly 100% likely to take out the entire team. They stand in separate groups (1 Warblade and 1 Kineticist each together but far from the others), thus making AoE unpalatable and the Warblade stands between the party and the Kineticist to prevent a charge. They will generally be easily able to live through 1 round of PC actions as well, so they can get off another 12d6+12 on the next round, and I'm not really sure how any PC will live through that. On the off-chance it happens, the Warblades have recovered their WRT and use it again.

 

[Slaved]

So you're going to rewrite the entire initiative rules for WRT?

It leaves everything the same about the initiative system except how this manuever works. Unless there are other abilities which trigger off of specific initiative numbers? But then since the actual number are still kept there is not a problem there either.

Other than that, the only thing that matters is order. It is a thematic change which shows the cyclical nature of initiative.

Think of it as a way of representing the initiative system more holistically and adding in a slight change to White Raven Tactics. Other than that manuever no game mechanics have changed.