Victim
First Post
Nail said:I've read some of the analyses of Warblade, and they all *start* at 20th level. I don't know about you, but my players don't start at 20th. They start at 1st. And they spend quite a bit of time between 1st and 20th.
Many of the manuever(stikes) require a standard or a full-round action. Is that the only drawback? I, too, have been in games where full-attacking Bbn/Ftrs have done 100's of points of damage per round...but that was when they were full-attacking (*and* buffed by the Cleric and Wizard, which could happen to the warblade too). Full attacks are not always the norm in combat.
Counters and Boosts and Stances can be layered on top of strikes....that action limitation starts to sound like less of a drawback.
Yeah, full attacks aren't always the norm, so standard action strikes or full action ones that allow some form of movement are a significant boon for the warblade. On the other hand, some tricks like Leap Attack or Shock Trooper only work on charge attacks so the fighter has some options for not losing all his damage on a single attack. Spirited Charge can also work (but that's more a pally trick). Grappling will often be a strong choice for a monk limited to a single attack, so even if they lose out on lots of damage compared to a full attack, they're still potentially restricting their opponent significantly.
As far as buffing, I don't think it helps the warblade as much. An extra attack from haste is a big help to the fighter, but the warblade's strikes will often prevent the attack from being used. Also, if the warblade is using manuevers to compress his action into a single attack at his highest bonus, then the impact of +attack and damage buffs is greatly diminished.
Since characters can't combine immediate and swift actions, it's usually Counters or Boosts plus a Strike and Stance.
At low levels, the fighter probably has Cleave, while the warblade is using the move that lets him attack two opponents. I think it'd probably take until mid levels for the differences to start to show up. Also, the low level swordsage player hates his character because the amount of known manuevers forces them to be generalists instead of focusing on the player's prefered disciplines.