Warblade maneuvers
- Thread starter Zephiel7
- Start date
Nail said:
Let's say that we deal with situations that actually arise in the game, as opposed to hypothetical edge cases. How often do YOU throw illusionary cities at your players? Or rooms full of illusions? Are you in the habit of using an area of the rules that is notorious for requiring DM judgment? If so, you were already doing it long before the warblade came along, and you should have no problem extending that practice to deal with new classes.
Let's pretend that the situation is one that has arisen in practice. Now when does the party roll init?
Someone
Adventurer
Nail said:
The rules are worded in a way that you rarely save against illusions. If you interact with an illusion in a way that would grant you a save, it's very likely you don't have to make the save at all since you'll already have 'incontrovertible proof' that it's an illusion. If the party finds an illusory wall, and they examine it, they'll know it's an illusion the moment someone's hand go through it, without needing any save. They'd have to save if they spend some time carefully watching the wall at a distance, without touching it at all. In the example you propose, they get a save if they stand on the top of the pillar, watching the city for some time. If they throw a stone and see how it passes through a roof, they'll all know the city it's an illusion, without rolling saves.
Kae'Yoss
First Post
Nail said:
Yes, that it should, but the core material has to be balanced with itself. If the core material has parts that are just weak, supplements that resemble those parts should not be forced to be that weak, as well. (Same goes for overpowered stuff in core).
Nail said:
This puts the matter a bit too simply. There's more to it than this.
You have to devote some of your blade magic resources to the Diamond Mind discipline, and for a warblade that often means taking it as one of his two disciplines. (Not too great a hindrance, I give you that)
You also have to devote one of your manoeuvres to this. In order to be using the manoeuvre, you'll have to give up some other manoeuvre.
Also, you can't just use it every two rounds. You have to use it (and maybe another, like a strike, in the same round), and not use any other manoeuvres in the following round (since you need to spend your swift action regaining your manoeuvres, and are then forced to do a normal, regular, vanilla attack or waste a standard action practically doing nothing).
This means that from the 4+ manoeuvres you have prepared, you have to ignore at least half.
It also means that you have to do without your manoeuvres half the time.
I'd say there's quite a bit of difference between adhering to all these restrictions and just getting a feat that can be used every other round without any restrictions.
Nail said:
As other's have stated, it's not even close to this powerful - there are many more downsides.
let's see if I hit most of them (even already mentioned I suppose)
You have to focus on concentration which means one of your focuses is diamond mind - a good school but only 1 school.
You have to ready it as a manuever - for the warblade this is a significant investment - even for the swordsage it's not miniscule.
By using the manuever (as an immediate action) - the warblade cannot recover manuevers on his turn, as his swift action is considered expended. This means it actually takes 3 rounds before you can use this manuever again. The swordsage can recover the manuever, but can do nothing else on his action.
Because of the above, relying on this manuever keeps the warblade on the defensive, not the place an effective warblade wants to be.
By mid levels, and wizard with lots of will save spells will have caught on. Charm person 1st round - Charm monster/dominate 2nd round.
Finally, the 2 times I've seen a warblade in play (once playing one, once DMing) the moment of perfect mind has not been the least bit overpowering (or in the case when I DMed even that effective, the player wished he'd readied something else).
As for damage per round: In our last combat we had a 7th level bararian along with us. if he was full attacking 35 HP per round was low (granted he was hasted, but even without the haste he would have been up there). When he didn't full attack, he charged and used leap attack - he routinely did over 50 - and when he rolled a crit -well lets just say it was overkill.
On a curious note - people always comment on how effective (broken etc) the warblade is. I've found (and seen) that in play crusaders leave warblades in the dust and so can a well built swordsage.
Also comparing the classes to a core fighter is inacurate - core fighters at mid-high levels are not in the same leage as spellcasters. Now a fighter with access to splatbooks can keep up with the Bo9S classes (the problem there is that the fighter becomes a 1 trick pony - but that's a fun issue not a balance issue).
Arkhandus
First Post
Nail said:
Obviously, the Warblade gets no saving throw against the illusion until he tries to do something to interact with the city he sees around him. Once he goes up to one of the fruit stands and tries to pick up an illusory fruit, or goes to try starting a conversation with an illusory person there, or tries to kick an illusory piece of junk on the ground, THEN he qualifies to receive a saving throw for disbelief, now that he's interacting with the illusion or examining part of it closely. OR, once the dragon attacks him and the Warblade realizes he doesn't see what just hit him/blasted him with fire/whatever from apparently through that wall over there which doesn't make sense.....until he then rolls his save and realizes it's an illusion.
Arkhandus
First Post
Nail said:
Meaning they don't suck compared to 2/3rds or so of all D&D classes, who are primary casters and therefore have access to awesome-powerful spells over time? Core spellcasters are better than core warrior-types after a few levels. More powerful and more versatile, and more fun through those abilities.
Now, as we've already clearly pointed out in this thread or another so far, a core Barbarian can outdamage a martial adept class pretty consistently, just not with a single hit (which is no big deal; most of the time the Barbarian is going to be making full-attack actions anyway). Ergo, the martial adept classes are not necessarily overpowered compared to core warrior classes.
And again, I refer you to the thread in General, where we already pointed out that while a few maneuvers may be broken, that does not make martial adepts broken in general, and it is no worse than the handful of broken spells already available to casters in the core rules.
Sure. He's a monk. He's already going to succeed at most Will saves, what do you expect? High base Will, high Wisdom, Still Mind class feature, and eventually gains very decent Spell Resistance (though your multiclassed one may or may not go that far in monk). Now he just has the ability to nearly ensure that he'll succeed at a Will save, once every 2 rounds at most, and that's if he spends a round doing absolutely nothing useful to recover the maneuver or ready maneuvers again through the Adaptive Style feat.
It's still only once per 2 rounds, you know, and using it prevents the martial adept from using another save-boosting maneuver for 1 round. Just means the enemy has to throw 2 or 3 save effects at him in one round, or 1 such effect on 2 rounds in a row, or whatever. Is it really so wrong to have more than one enemy spellcaster in an encounter? And it's not like you wouldn't already have to account for the party's abilities when planning encounters, if they had a spellcaster around instead of a martial adept. And again, besides, the martial adept won't be able to use these maneuvers again until he spends a round doing nothing useful to get them back (or just to get 1 back, if he's a swordsage who didn't take Adaptive Style).
(Quick Edit: Forgot to address the Insightful Strike. That too is only once per 2 rounds at best, and even if he uses other strikes for a few rounds, he still has to stop after a few moments and spend a round or more to regain the use of his maneuvers.)
Is that really any different from a Wizard who casts Detect Magic and detects the illusion aura in the room, then gets a new chance to disbelieve with an added bonus or something for having received evidence that there's something fishy? C'mon!(For example: Say the martial adept walk into an illusion-cloaked room with the party...there's virtually no chance the martial adept will fail an out-of-combat Will save. Illusionary puzzles and tricks? Don't bother, Mr. DM sir!)
All that said: It's still a fun class to see in action! As a DM, I've had to make adjustments, but I can handle it.I just wish the manuevers had been more fully playtested, preferably by a bunch of powergamers, to find the holes. (hong, I'm lookin' at you!
)
And that's assuming he doesn't just use an area Dispel Magic or something. Or that the party's monk or cleric didn't somehow, by rights, succeed at their saving throw because of their already-great Will saves.
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blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
Don't forget that you can't use immediate actions when flatfooted. Counters aren't the be-all end-all solution to Will saves.
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