ToB, Warblade, & Feat Questions

[LiL KiNG]

The cust. serv. Q&A for Tome of Battle stated that meeting pre-reqs only matters when acquiring a maneuver; afterwards you can undercut your "base" of maneuvers used to qualify if you wish by swapping them out with no ill effect. I'm not a fan of that ruling, but WB certainly benefits from the help with the paltry amount of maneuvers known vs. # of disciplines.

Not too much a fan of that either since it goes against how feats work or rather don't work if you lose the prereq feat, but I'll take it since WB is so maneuver deprived.

Yes, stances count as maneuvers for the "must know X # of maneuvers" requirements. Almost all my warblades take Leading the Charge stance to qualify for WR Tactics and/or Battle Leader's Charge w/o having to learn any of those other yucky 1st and 2nd level WR maneuvers (seriously, they're pretty bad). *thumbs up*

That's good, will definitely help when planning out my progression. Thanks for both of those answers!

and if you feel dirty about it, just remind yourself the druid can wildshape and pounce all day long AND still cast 9th level spells. I find it makes me feel far less badly about it.

LOL yep, feel just fine about it now. I actually use it a lot, but multiclass penalties would end up hurting this build so I'd prefer to not dip it this time.

EDIT: Also notice the stone dragon 9th level maneuver, Mountain Tombstone Strike. Requires NO maneuvers known in order to learn.

Wow. Though so-so in its ability compared to say Tiger Claw's where you can outright kill someone, 2d6 Con damage with no save is no laughing matter. Recover and strike again and someone is in serious trouble. Another good strike you've brought to my attention, thanks!

 

[Wyvernhand]

2. I know the recovery methods played into this, or at least that is my guess. I know the Warblade recovers his maneuvers easily, it was more a versatility thing of having another readied maneuver meaning you could be more prepared for different situations. Short of using yet another precious feat slot, you don't have time in combat to change out your maneuvers. I suppose the Crusader really can't plan around that with the whole granted maneuver thing.

If you look at the delta between maneuvers readied and maneuvers known, however, you'll see that for about the first 10 or so levels, that delta averages out to about 1.5. You only know about 1-2 maneuvers that you can't ready. Having more readied as a Warblade, in most cases, just means keeping a couple of your lowbies you probably wouldn't even use before you recharge on the roster. Would you rather refresh to bring Ruby Knightmare and Greater Insightful Strike back a round early or pop off a piddly Sapphire Nightmare and THEN refresh? Granted, some of the low level maneuvers DO scale nicely, like Emerald Razor and Moment of Perfect Mind, but others either get replaced at even levels or fall off in usefulness and are probably best off forgotten.

 

[LiL KiNG]

Would you rather refresh to bring Ruby Knightmare and Greater Insightful Strike back a round early or pop off a piddly Sapphire Nightmare and THEN refresh? Granted, some of the low level maneuvers DO scale nicely, like Emerald Razor and Moment of Perfect Mind, but others either get replaced at even levels or fall off in usefulness and are probably best off forgotten.

I see your point about the scaling issue - keeping MoPM available seems nice though. Re-reading through the Warblade entry I don't see anything that says you have to expend all your readied maneuvers before you can recover them.
Unless it states it somewhere else I'm under the impression as a Warblade you could use Emerald Razor, recover, use Emerald Razor again. So it goes back to the versatility thing where having one extra maneuver readied and at your disposal could be very useful.
Looking at that combo above though, I can also see why maybe they limited the Warblades maneuvers. Using Mountain Tombstone, recover, Mnt. Tombstone, recover, repeat until a creature is out of CON is repetitive, time consuming, and horribly mean!

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

What wyvern means is...given a situation where guy A has no maneuvers left and guy B only has Saph NM Blade left...

...Both are probably going to be spending their next turn recovering maneuvers. Having that extra low level maneuver left over won't often actually mean anything, you'll be better off not using a maneuver that round so next round you can bring out the big guns again.

 

[LiL KiNG]

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