A little confusion regarding Crusaders.

[G.Cube]

I have no doubts that the Playground knows it's stuff, you guys prove it over and over again with almost every thread, but I'm having a little trouble understanding something about Crusaders. How does their manuver set up not suck? It seems like having only your options -randomly- determined would decrease versatility and make it slightly difficult to plan during a fight. So, can the Playground enlighten me a little on the Crusader manuver set up?

[Rebel7284]

Step 1. Feat Tax: Extra readied maneuver.
Step 2. Pick only good maneuvers.
Step 3. Probability!
Step 4. Win

If all else fails, play the idiot crusader.

[Particle_Man]

1) The maneuvers you are likely to pick are almost all good, so it doesn't matter which ones you have "to hand".

2) You will get the other ones soon anyhow (within a few rounds).

3) Even if you can't use a maneuver this round, you still have full BAB.

4) You can take a feat to have an extra granted maneuver, making your "refresh" faster and giving you your maneuvers fasters.

5) You don't have to *do* anything to get your maneuvers backs, which is great for saving on the action economy.

[Particle_Man]

6) If it really bothers you you could go for the Ruby Knight of Wee Jas prestige class - they have a way to spend an undead turning to get back a maneuver in case you need on *right now*.

[IAmTehDave]

7) It lets you use the coolest OOC mechanic for knowing which maneuvers are ready for you:
7a) Make up flash cards for each of your maneuvers.
7b) Pick a number of flash cards/maneuvers equal to your current number prepared, hand to DM (assuming you trust DM to be impartially random with them)
7c) DM "deals" you maneuvers each round, and you toss them back when you use them

Alternate 7b/c) Take those cards and put them next to your dice, draw from the deck whenever you get maneuvers, and when out of maneuvers, reshuffle.

(At least, this is TOTALLY how I would do it if I were to play a Crusader.)

[Devronq]

7) It lets you use the coolest OOC mechanic for knowing which maneuvers are ready for you:
7a) Make up flash cards for each of your maneuvers.
7b) Pick a number of flash cards/maneuvers equal to your current number prepared, hand to DM (assuming you trust DM to be impartially random with them)
7c) DM "deals" you maneuvers each round, and you toss them back when you use them

Alternate 7b/c) Take those cards and put them next to your dice, draw from the deck whenever you get maneuvers, and when out of maneuvers, reshuffle.

(At least, this is TOTALLY how I would do it if I were to play a Crusader.)

Yes this is the best way to do it you can even print the cards of online. The printed versions were the same size as magic cards so we glued them to old land cards and ya died exactly as you described

[Pluto!]

Most of the Crusader's maneuvers are effects like "Give an Ally an extra turn," "Heal somebody" and "Deal a handful of extra damage." These are pretty widely applicable - as long as there's combat, you'll have party members taking damage and enemies demanding damage, and the party will always benefit from extra actions.

If you've somehow made maneuver selections that are entirely situationally effects like Douse the Flames, Moment of Perfect Mind and Iron Heart Surge, there is the chance of just drawing blanks for a few turns, which, yeah, would suck. But there are few of those situational powers on the Crusader's list, and they don't have to be prepared when they're unlikely to be useful.

In the builds where their recovery mechanism is the best mechanism, it's because it's a free action. That sounds like a minor detail, but it's not rare for that to be just huge in a RKV or JPM build, as it lets them cast spells, activate feats like Travel Devotion or Minor Shapeshift, trigger items or choose to go into melee when the situation is favorable instead of being forced to sit out a round or to go into melee when it's not so desirable.

[FullStop]

I have no doubts that the Playground knows it's stuff, you guys prove it over and over again with almost every thread, but I'm having a little trouble understanding something about Crusaders. How does their manuver set up not suck? It seems like having only your options -randomly- determined would decrease versatility and make it slightly difficult to plan during a fight. So, can the Playground enlighten me a little on the Crusader manuver set up?

Go read the Swordsage's recovery mechanic, then get back to us on whether you still think the Crusader's all that bad.

On a more serious note, given the fact that a Crusader always has at least some maneuvers available, and the relatively small size of their ready pool, you can pretty easily set yourself up that you're highly unlikely to be getting maneuvers granted that you don't have a use for(and keep in mind that maneuvers that are granted to you don't stop being granted until you either use them or need to reshuffle).

[Sception]

I don't dislike crusader recovery not because it's bad mechanically. If anything, it's the strongest recovery mechanic due to action economy and the ease with which its manipulated to allow the every turn spamming of you strongest power.

I dislike it because as a mechanic its gimmicky, distracting, and requires additional props at the table. Between rulebooks, maps, dice, and minis, my tables have props enough, thanks. Imo the mechanic isn't weak, it's awkward. I'm just not a fan of card based mechanics at the D&D table.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

I don't dislike crusader recovery not because it's bad mechanically. If anything, it's the strongest recovery mechanic due to action economy and the ease with which its manipulated to allow the every turn spamming of you strongest power.

I dislike it because as a mechanic its gimmicky, distracting, and requires additional props at the table. Between rulebooks, maps, dice, and minis, my tables have props enough, thanks. Imo the mechanic isn't weak, it's awkward. I'm just not a fan of card based mechanics at the D&D table.

Luckily, the Idiot Crusader fixes that. There's no need to shuffle cards when you get all your maneuvers each turn!:smallbiggrin:

[Sception]

explaitability for spamming isn't exactly a mark in the Crusader recovery mechanic's favor, imo.

I'm not saying I'd ban the crusader as a DM or anything, though I might offer a variant with warblade style recovery and a streamlined delay damage mechanic, just in case any of my players are like me in enjoying the concept and maneuver pool but aren't a fan of the fidgetiness of the mechanics. I also might swap the hit dice of war blades and crusaders.

Or maybe not. I'm not big on house rules in games I run, even when there are mechanics I'm not a big fan of.

But I wouldn't play a Crusader again, not as written. I like the idea, and I like the maneuver pool, the gimmick of attacking and healing at the same time, and alignment based maneuvers and such. but the class skeleton those maneivers are stapled onto, for me anyway, got in the way of the fun instead of contributing to it.

It's one of the reasons I like that one elf-based PrC. Grants open access to Crusader type maneuvers on a Warblade's chassis.