What, If Anything, Might be Wrong with the Warblade?

[Egres]

Can anyone give me a quick run-down on what stances and manoeuvers are exactly? Also, are they randomized per use or something? Also, (heh) why does everyone say that White Raven is overpowered?

You can download (from the WotC site) all the maneuvers and stances here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20061225a

Warmaster's Charge, which allows all the party to charge, deal ludicrous damage and force the opponent charged to save VS stun (with a stupidly difficult save)

It's even worse: there's no save against the stun effect.

 

[Rystil Arden]

hong and Someone got the main ones. Secondarily, anything that directly uses a skill check in place of something else for an attack is problematic (Leaping Dragon Attack with the stupid high save DC or be stunned, for instance. To a lesser extent, the Diamond Mind strike to replace your damage with a Concentration check can get out of hand at low levels, until other people get iterative attacks and the Diamond Mond strike still is just one)

 

[tylermalan]

Thanks for the links and the help! That clears things up a bit.

 

[awayfarer]

I'm allowing it in my upcoming Eberron campaign with a couple of minor nerfs. I removed Weapon Aptitude and they're not allowed to pick fighter bonus feats. I also gave fighters a bump by giving them all of their fighter-only feats for free at roughly the levels that they would recieve them normally.

My beef with the Warblade is three-fold.

1: It looks like it was designed by the dm's kid brother with the sole intent of being "uber"

2: The flavor text behind it is just garbage. "Hi, I love violence because I'm good at it because I love it!"

3: It was asinine to give it another classes features, by which I am specifically referring to fighter bonus feats. It'd be like making another core class with all the stats of a barbarian, only with a slew of other features and a stance progression tacked on.

I should state that I actually like the Bo9S classes and the maneuver/stance progression in general.

 

[blargney the second]

As for warblades vs. crusaders vs. swordsages, I've played all three, albeit very shortly. My limited experience was that they were all more or less fine, but my pick as the strongest of the three would be crusader. As a semi-related note, I would also say the crusader is the most difficult to play, while the swordsage is the most difficult to design well, while the warblade is the easiest for both.

I agree with all of the above.

I ran a CR-appropriate encounter with a wererat warblade that was using Weapon Finesse, Shadow Blade, and a spiked chain - completely optimized for use of a very high Dex. It was fine. A tough encounter, as a BBEG ought to be, but totally fine. As added bonuses, he was easy to build, and very easy to run.

There's a swordsage in the same campaign and I'm playing a crusader in a different one.
-blarg

 

[kigmatzomat]

For some reason, warblades tend not to be as powerful in play as they look on paper. Not entirely sure why but I'm starting to slowly, ever so slowly, think that maybe some playtesting was done on the Bo9S after all. I think not having ranged weapons without burning feats/multiclassing (you do face flying monsters sometimes, no?) and trading iterative attacks for one megawhomp that sometimes misses does the trick.

Crusaders are a great paladin/blackguard alternative, IMO, and are quite effective. I've decided I like them the most. T

I've got a few rules... "clarifications" for ToB IMC. 1) WRT is effectively haste and cannot be used with any other action-granting abilities. 2) WB cannot make a full attack when refreshing maneuvers.

 

[Nail]

To a lesser extent, the Diamond Mind strike to replace your damage with a Concentration check can get out of hand at low levels....

In the party I DM, we've got a WB/Mnk, who just got Insightful Strike. He's maxed out his Con and Concentration check, so he's doing 1d20+21 hp of damage per round at level 6.

I have a feeling that the manuevers that base effects off of a skill check aren't just problematic....they're very problematic, and just scream "maximize!".

 

[Nail]

I'm allowing it in my upcoming Eberron campaign with a couple of minor nerfs. I removed Weapon Aptitude and they're not allowed to pick fighter bonus feats. I also gave fighters a bump by giving them all of their fighter-only feats for free at roughly the levels that they would recieve them normally.

IMC, I reduced the WB's HD to d10, and gave Ftrs a bonus feat at *every* level.

So far, so good. We have a WB/Mnk and a Ftr in the group, so comparisons are easy. They've both hit level 6, as I mentioned above, so with the WB's Insightful Strike....

...we'll see.

 

[IndyPendant]

For the record, I'm the GM of a Warblade that's been playing it for about half a year now. I went into it very reluctantly. I don't like the Warblade. I felt the class was overpowered. I don't like the mechanics of the Warblade. (If it's magical--and face it, the maneuvers are--then it's NOT a pure tank class, dammit! Don't call it one!) I let the player give it a try because I could have been wrong, he really wanted to play it, and we have a solid GM/Player relationship based on some trust. If it didn't work out, I knew we'd be able to work out an acceptable compromise.

I have this image of myself over the past five months or so, crouched over the PC like a cat over a mousehole, waiting for the moment when I can pounce and say "SEE?!? Clearly overpowered!!!!"

I'm still waiting.

I'm still not entirely convinced the Warblade is a balanced class. I still don't like the mechanics of it. But I *have* decided it's not extremely overpowered; if I do finally decide it needs fixing, I'll likely change some of the class features rather than ban it outright. For example, I have already removed the "free action recharge" entirely, since the maneuvers renew each combat anyways. (The player had never even used the ability before then.)

YMMV, but I went into this *expecting* the Warblade to prove obviously overpowered. Almost *wanting* it to be (everyone wants to be proven right, after all : ). It hasn't happened.

(As an aside, the other PCs are a Duskblade, Beguiler, spellcasting-centric Cleric, and Artificer. So that may have skewed the results. Take that however you wish...)

 

[Stalker0]

Never having seen any of the BO9S in play can't say about brokeneness or anything, but it looks broken from a "fun perspective" compared to other fighting classes.

Fighters fight, Barbs fight, its what they do. But the warblade gets good hitdice, good BAB, but has a lot of "fun things" a caster can do. They can heal, and do area damage and sometimes move extra around the battlefield and so on. I don't think a player playing a pally, barb, or ranger could feel good watching this guy do about as much damage as them but get to do all the fun stuff as well.