Warblade and Swordsage: Overpowered?

[Nightfall]

Amazing. Any other insights?

I seem to recall that at the start of Third Edition, almost everyone seemed to say the Monk was overpowered. When in fact it was one of the weakest classes all around.

Yeah Thurbane needs a nap!

But serious monk isn't weak, nor it is the weakest class around. Bard is. (Are we really THAT surprised?)

Victim,

Honestly I was more looking at Fighters than Barbarians. (Of course 3.0 Barbs did count at one time when I was talking about it.) But the fact is while it's possible to dominate a melee combatant (paladin, ranger, fighter and barbarian), the trouble general is with the other four, they have ways to avoid spellcasters' effects. But the fact is I'd like to meet the fighter that actually took Iron Will. Cause honestly, in all the games I've played, 0% of any player took Iron will unless it was to meet a req for a Pr-class.

 

[Perun]

High level powerhouses that can still get themselves enchanted/dominated/held or barbequed on a failed Reflex/Will save.

So can a spellcaster. There's always at least 5% chance that you'll fail your save.

Anyways, with the PHB II a figter can, at the cost of mere two feats, get his Con bonus to his Will save. Another feat, Combat Focus, will give him a further +2 bonus to Will saves after he scores a hit in combat.

That's in addition to Iron Will.

This save-raising has a somewhat steep cost (total of four feats), but, hey, if a fighter can't afford it -- who can?

Regards.

 

[Paradigm]

Right now in the campaign I am participating in, we have a Warblade, freshly made, at 15th level. He isn't any more effective than either the fighter or the knight. He does more damage than the knight, and has a better AC than the fighter. All three builds are pretty well done. The circumstances in which the Warblade is more effective is when the party has to fight on the move, and he can make his attack as a standard action and do more damage than the fighter. If the fighter can lay into something that mostly stays put, the buffs start to really add up. (Marshal, Bard, Cleric, Archivist). If a position has to be held to protect the spellcasters, the Knight is unrivalled. The seven characters operate as a well-oiled machine.

The Warblade does not dominate melee, isn't the best at each situation, and doesn't take away any of the unique roles of any other character. Without any of those three conditions I wouldn't judge the class to be unbalanced.

 

[Nightfall]

Peren,

Yeah well I'm still waiting to see that happen (someone taking a feat to increase their chance of not being De-willified). And as for a spellcaster, honestly that 5% chance isn't that good. I speak from experience on that one. *Grumbles slightly on Censure of Mesos...*

 

[Victim]

Yeah Thurbane needs a nap!

But serious monk isn't weak, nor it is the weakest class around. Bard is. (Are we really THAT surprised?)

Victim,

Honestly I was more looking at Fighters than Barbarians. (Of course 3.0 Barbs did count at one time when I was talking about it.) But the fact is while it's possible to dominate a melee combatant (paladin, ranger, fighter and barbarian), the trouble general is with the other four, they have ways to avoid spellcasters' effects. But the fact is I'd like to meet the fighter that actually took Iron Will. Cause honestly, in all the games I've played, 0% of any player took Iron will unless it was to meet a req for a Pr-class.

That's funny, because in my group it's pretty standard for fighter types to have some measure to help avoid Will effects. Iron Will, a non humanoid race so that X "person" spells fail, multiclassing, those PHB2 feats, etc. I pretty much always take Iron Will for a fighter type - I even took it in the example character above for a comparison that didn't involve saves at all!

I wonder how much magic resources your group allocates to boosting saves too. Just as group preferences on encounters/day, prefered monster types, treasure amounts can all have a significant impact in play, how much trouble players (and monsters) take with their saves is also going to have a balance effect. Let's say for the sake of argument that my group is a high saving throw environment. Spell attacks, especially save or die effects, will be less effective (which is the whole point of boosting saves ) so casters are generally weaker and in particular suffer with many direct effects. So casters will do more buffs, debuffs - Slow and Confusion spread the effects over many targets so someone will likely fail; Ray of Enfeeblement and Enervation have no save - battlefield control, etc. So fighter types benefit in several ways. First of all, they probably have higher saves themselves. Second, the reduced effects of many attack spells increases the importance of their damage. And finally, casters using more buff, debuff, and area control are going to increase the fighters' ability to deal damage in combat.

 

[Solarious]

But serious monk isn't weak, nor it is the weakest class around. Bard is. (Are we really THAT surprised?)

Sure, the bard is weak, but only because many of the powers are DM-intensive. If the DM is experienced enough and allows the players leeway when they apply their abilities creatively, the Bard can become quite the powerhouse.

Case in point: use skills/spells to look like an enemy's ally, Facinate them when in music range (suitably twinked, of course), and let the rest of the party (buffed up with your magic, naturally) move into flanking positions while the enemy is held in Fireball formation. Let loose the hounds, and use your Bardic Song to make the slicing and dicing all the more painful. And after all, didn't high level play tell you Initiative counts?

 

[brehobit]

Amulet of natural armor is 2k, not 1k. Plus your chain shirt isn't mithril. Either spend 1k more or drop your AC by 1 because of the max Dex. I think HP are also important to fighting characters; your swordsage has 45. By the way, your character is within 4 lbs of medium encumberance from just his weapon and armor, and can lose his AC bonus.

Yep the joys of doing things by memory, thanks...

Over 6 rounds, with 3 single attacks and 3 full attacks, the character does 140.94 damage. Not counting any cleaves of course.

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Okay, that's 153.14 damage. Dang. I hate it when I do all this work and I don't get the numbers I want. Still, I don't think the swordsage demonstrates total supremacy despite his advantage in damage and AC - more full attacks, fire resistance (energy resistance is significantly easier to get than DR), stuff that's immune to sneak attacks, or a different AC could all swing things the barbarian's way. Or even not assuming that enemies fail their save, that the touch attack hits, and that he makes his concentration check. But it's still pretty disapointing. I was figuring that conventional fighter types would have an edge in raw damage but that the swordsage would have a bunch more tricks.

I think in general your analysis was generous to the swordsage. (Getting a sneak attack on an AoO is rare for example). That said:

* The HP/AC difference probably goes to the swordsage, but for some things there is nothing like lots of HPs.
* The barbarian has a marked advantage at range.
* This swordsage build (all dex) is more than a bit broken and has lots of problems (carrying things for example)
* I would argue that the fireball is quite likely to catch more than one baddy in the blast. I never saw it NOT manage that in about 10 fights (using published Eberron modules...). 6d6 (+2 perhaps) is good area damage at this level.
* As noted, fire resistance would suck a fair bit of damage away. But if you _know_ you will be facing fire resistant baddies, you can select different maneuvers with a 5 minute break.
* I chose the maneuvers somewhat randomly. He should have one more 3rd level one...

Net effect: the swordsage at 6th level is on-par with a fairly optimized warrior type (perhaps better in most fights, certainly worse in some). This build can teleport 50' at will (well needs 1 round to regain that ability after using it, but that is _really_ handy esp. in a front-line fighter). He could freely choose to spider climb at will. And he has darn good skills.

Thanks for doing the comparison!

 

[Plane Sailing]

It may sound silly, but the warblade looks to me as if it would probably be an interesting and balanced class when compared to other melee types with no stances or manoeuvres at all!

I wouldn't allow the ToB classes into an ongoing campaign of mine, for both balance concerns and flavour concerns.

However, if I were to start a new fantasy campaign, I'd be happy building them in from the start, along with a flavour that supports them (and possibly some tweaks to make it easier for any other class to gain the stances and manoeuvres).

 

[Thurbane]

Amazing. Any other insights?

I seem to recall that at the start of Third Edition, almost everyone seemed to say the Monk was overpowered. When in fact it was one of the weakest classes all around.

Hint: the smiley indicates a certain level of sarcasm/humour...

 

[Nifft]

This is why the Adaptive Stlye feat is a MUST for a Swordsage. Instead of using a full round action to recover one maneuver, they can use Adaptive Style to use a full round action and recover all their moves.

Does Adaptive Style really work that way? Where can I find confirmation?

Thanks, -- N