ToB Discipline's Weapon?

[Qwertystop]

Each discipline in ToB has a weapon (sometimes more than one) and a skill associated with it. What exactly does this mean? Are maneuvers from a given discipline only usable if you have a certain amount of ranks in the skill, and are wielding the relevant weapon?

[Darrin]

Each discipline in ToB has a weapon (sometimes more than one) and a skill associated with it. What exactly does this mean? Are maneuvers from a given discipline only usable if you have a certain amount of ranks in the skill, and are wielding the relevant weapon?

You can use any maneuver with any weapon you can normally use. Except for a couple of feats and one or two class features, it doesn't generally matter if you use a weapon associated with a particular discipline.

Weapons associated with a particular discipline only really matters for something like Blade Meditation or Shadow Blade. Bloodclaw Master also has some benefits for using Tiger Claw (plus dagger) weapons.

[Cog]

As for skills, some maneuvers require a skill check as part of their function. Each school is tied to a skill, so Tiger Claw maneuvers may require or exploit jump checks, for example.

[Qwertystop]

So the weapon is basically flavor outside of unusual circumstances, and the skill is just generally useful but not a prereq per se?

[Cog]

Yep. ToB aimed for flexibility. I wouldn't call the weapon situations unusual - Shadow Blade is pretty popular, for example - but they don't come up if you don't want them to.

[Qwertystop]

Yep. ToB aimed for flexibility. I wouldn't call the weapon situations unusual - Shadow Blade is pretty popular, for example - but they don't come up if you don't want them to.

OK, thanks.

[Drglenn]

Swordsages get free weapon focus in a discipline's favoured weapon(s), and as mentioned above shadow blade only works for shadow hand's favoured weapons.