Book of the nine Swords

[Grayson01]

Hey never played a Martial Adept, trying to understand how each of the 3 clasess uses stances and Manenuvers and refreshes them. Could someone/s break it down for me in a turn based format. Like Swordsage X on it's turn uses X action too. If a few people could help me out I would appreciate it.

[Yorrin]

The three ToB classes are practically identical in terms of stance/maneuver usage. Each class can assume and stance it knows as a swift action. Most maneuvers are activated as a standard action and most of those allow you to make a basic attack that has some sort of bonus effect on it. Boosts are maneuvers that are usually activated as a swift or immediate action that often take the form of counter-attacks or other minor useful stuff.

All the above is the same for all three classes. The major difference comes into play in how the classes access thier maneuvers and refresh their maneuvers (stances remain the same across the board).

Swordsages have the easiest one. They have a certain number of maneuvers that they can have readied at any given time, which is always fewer than the number of maneuvers they know. This means they have to have picked at some point in the past which of their maneuvers will be "readied" at that moment. This is much like a Wizard has to choose how to fill up his spell slots from his spellbook, except no duplicates are allowed and it only takes 5mins rather than 8hrs of sleep. Once in combat the swordsage can use any readied maneuver once. As a full round action that does not provoke AOs he can refresh any single maneuver to be used again.

Warblades are a lot like Swordsages, but the crucial difference is that instead of taking a full round action to refresh one maneuver they can use their swift action immediately followed by a standard action to make a normal melee attack OR they can spend a standard action to do nothing. Doing this refreshes not just one but ALL of their readied maneuvers.

Crusaders have perhaps the most confusing mechanic. Like the others they ready a certain number of maneuvers, but rather than having access to all of their readied maneuvers they have a subset of readied maneuvers call their "granted" maneuvers. Granted maneuvers are always fewer in number than readied maneuvers, and are determined randomly by the DM at the start of combat by choosing from your readied maneuvers. You only have access to your granted maneuvers, rather than all of your readied maneuvers, but like normal readied maneuvers you can use each granted maneuver once. At the end of each turn one of your "withheld" maneuvers (that is a readied maneuver that has not been granted) becomes a granted maneuver. After you've been granted all your readied maneuvers your maneuvers automatically refresh without any action on your part at the end of your next turn. When this happens the DM will automatically recalculate your granted maneuvers by once again randomly choosing from your readied maneuvers. This means that you might have a different starting set of granted maneuvers this time.

I play a lot of ToB classes (especially Crusaders) so feel free to ask for clarification or examples.

[Bob]

The way I understand warblades and swordsages, maneuvers function very similarly to spells, except in terms of availability and preparation. at the beginning of combat, any of a ss or wb's readied maneuvers is available for use. after he uses any specific maneuver, that maneuver becomes unavailable until it is refreshed or until the ss/wb spends 5 minutes out of combat.

Methods of preparation:

a warblade has a very efficient method of maneuver preparation. The warblade makes an attack or an attack-like weapon flourish, both as a standard action, to refresh all of his readied maneuvers. Technically, refreshing is a swift action, but the swift action must be followed by the standard actions described above. two key drawbacks here: the attack must be a standard action, and can not be part of a full attack. and the warblade cannot use maneuvers while refreshing in this manner.

Swordsages don't have it quite as easy. a swordsage must meditate for a for a full round to refresh a single readied maneuver. this meditation does not provoke AO's and does not restrict the use of maneuvers. A swordsage will typically take adaptive style to make his refreshing maneuver a little more palatable.

I'm not even going to try to recall how to play a crusader. I'm sure someone will come by to talk about those, like this yorrin character who obviously runs a ss

[Knaight]

The way crusader works sounds complicated, but in practice you basically have each maneuver on a card, and have a 'hand' of readied maneuvers. You use one, then you draw a new one, after your 'deck' is empty you shuffle your discard and it becomes a deck. It's just modeled with dice, which makes it do the same thing in a more complex way.

[Grayson01]

The three ToB classes are practically identical in terms of stance/maneuver usage. Each class can assume and stance it knows as a swift action. Most maneuvers are activated as a standard action and most of those allow you to make a basic attack that has some sort of bonus effect on it. Boosts are maneuvers that are usually activated as a swift or immediate action that often take the form of counter-attacks or other minor useful stuff.

All the above is the same for all three classes. The major difference comes into play in how the classes access thier maneuvers and refresh their maneuvers (stances remain the same across the board).

Swordsages have the easiest one. They have a certain number of maneuvers that they can have readied at any given time, which is always fewer than the number of maneuvers they know. This means they have to have picked at some point in the past which of their maneuvers will be "readied" at that moment. This is much like a Wizard has to choose how to fill up his spell slots from his spellbook, except no duplicates are allowed and it only takes 5mins rather than 8hrs of sleep. Once in combat the swordsage can use any readied maneuver once. As a full round action that does not provoke AOs he can refresh any single maneuver to be used again.

Warblades are a lot like Swordsages, but the crucial difference is that instead of taking a full round action to refresh one maneuver they can use their swift action immediately followed by a standard action to make a normal melee attack OR they can spend a standard action to do nothing. Doing this refreshes not just one but ALL of their readied maneuvers.

Crusaders have perhaps the most confusing mechanic. Like the others they ready a certain number of maneuvers, but rather than having access to all of their readied maneuvers they have a subset of readied maneuvers call their "granted" maneuvers. Granted maneuvers are always fewer in number than readied maneuvers, and are determined randomly by the DM at the start of combat by choosing from your readied maneuvers. You only have access to your granted maneuvers, rather than all of your readied maneuvers, but like normal readied maneuvers you can use each granted maneuver once. After you've used up all your granted maneuvers your maneuvers automatically refresh without any action on your part. When this happens the DM will automatically recalculate your granted maneuvers by once again randomly choosing from your readied maneuvers. This means that you might have a different set of granted maneuvers this time.

I play a lot of ToB classes (especially Crusaders) so feel free to ask for clarification or examples.

Yeah it's the refereshing in combat that I really am trying to understand.
So for a Warblade on it's turn It takes a swift action then makes a standered action attack or a Flursih and it refreahes them.
But for the Swordsage and the Crusaider I am a bit less sure how that works.

[rollforeigninit]

It's important to note that many Swordsages take Adaptive Style which allows them to take a full round (?AFB) action to refresh all the maneuvers at once. It's a lot more economical than just the one but it is a feat less to spend on something else.

[weckar]

There is one common misconception about the Book of Nine Swords I'd like to get out of the way: Most of the book applies to more weapons than just swords.

[DeltaEmil]

Yeah it's the refereshing in combat that I really am trying to understand.
So for a Warblade on it's turn It takes a swift action then makes a standered action attack or a Flursih and it refreahes them.
But for the Swordsage and the Crusaider I am a bit less sure how that works.The Warblade's refresh maneuver is using a swift action and then either making a melee attack (can be either a standard melee attack (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#attack) or a full attack (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#fullAttack)), or a flourish that takes a standard action.

Swordsages need to use a full-round action to refresh a single expended maneuver, crusaders get a randomly granted maneuver each round. Yorrin has explained it quite thoroughly.

[Crake]

The way crusader works sounds complicated, but in practice you basically have each maneuver on a card, and have a 'hand' of readied maneuvers. You use one, then you draw a new one, after your 'deck' is empty you shuffle your discard and it becomes a deck. It's just modeled with dice, which makes it do the same thing in a more complex way.

Actually, using that analogy, when the deck is empty, you shuffle everything and start again, not just the discard pile.

[weckar]

Wouldn't the discard pile at that point effectively BE the deck? Also, it is completely valid for a power to be repeatedly granted without other powers ever coming up, so the deck analogy doesn't completely work.

[Yorrin]

Yeah it's the refereshing in combat that I really am trying to understand.
So for a Warblade on it's turn It takes a swift action then makes a standered action attack or a Flursih and it refreahes them.
But for the Swordsage and the Crusaider I am a bit less sure how that works.

Correct on Warblade.

Swordsage has to spend a full round action, and rather than refreshing all their maneuvers they only refresh one of their choice. Though as rollforeigninit pointed out, there's a feat that lets you do all instead of just one.

Crusader doesn't have to spend an action at all. They start with a subset of readied maneuvers called granted maneuvers, and at the end of each turn one more readied maneuver becomes a granted maneuver. When they've been granted all their readied maneuvers then they basically get a new set of maneuvers granted at the end of that turn as if combat had just begun. This is basically a trade off, because they have less control than the other classes about what they have access to, but they don't have to spend an action to refresh. The confusing part is that when they refresh it's not the same granted maneuvers that you just used (at least, not necessarily) but rather your granted maneuvers are recalculated by the DM.

For example, Sir Crusader the Valiant at level one has readied maneuvers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. When combat starts the DM rolls randomly and tells him that his granted maneuvers are 2 and 5. Sir Crusader can use these maneuvers in any order he wishes, or can ignore his maneuvers and fight as normal. At the end of each round he gets and additional maneuver from his readied maneuvers that had previously been withheld. Eventually (after three turns of granting maneuvers) there are no more withheld maneuvers. When this happens the DM rerolls from his list of readied maneuvers at the end of his next turn. This time maneuvers 1 and 2 are chosen as his current granted maneuvers, and the cycle continues.

[gorfnab]

These should help:
Tome of Battle for Dummies (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1146801)
Crusader (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=181655) Handbooks (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2645.0)
Swordsage (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=196531) Handbooks (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=259783)
Warblade (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176968) Handbooks (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=4408.0)

[The Insaniac]

That's not quite how it works. Let's assume a 9th level crusader. You have nine maneuvers known and five readied. At the beginning of each encounter you are granted two maneuvers from the set that you have readied. At the end of each turn, you are automatically granted a new maneuver regardless of whether or not you have used any maneuvers this turn. If, at the end of your turn, you cannot be granted a new maneuver, you immediately lose all of your granted maneuvers, ready all of your maneuvers again and are granted two new maneuvers.

So, for example (keeping in mind that the maneuvers are granted randomly):

Beginning of combat: maneuvers 1 and 4 are granted. 2, 3 and 5 are withheld.

Turn 1: 1 is still granted, 4 is expended, 3 is granted at the end of the turn, 2 and five are withheld.

Turn 2: 1 and 3 are still granted, 4 is still expended, 5 is granted at the end of the turn, 2 is withheld.

Turn 3: 1 is still granted; 3, 4 and 5 are expended; 2 is granted at the end of the turn and none are withheld.

Turn 4: 2 is still granted; 1, 3, 4 and 5 are expended. At the end of the turn no more maneuvers can be granted so 2 is lost and all of the maneuvers are readied again. Then 4 and 5 are granted.

[Yorrin]

:smalleek:
I just realized I've been explaining my houserule rather than RAW. I am SO sorry. The Insaniac is absolutely right. I just reread that section, and I forgot about the getting an extra granted maneuver each turn thing.

In case his breakdown confused you I'll put it slightly different. Using Sir Crusader the Valiant, my 1st level Crusader from my last example.

Combat begins, DM rolls and grants you maneuvers 2 and 5.

Turn 1: You use maneuver 5. At the end of the turn you are (randomly) granted maneuver 3.

Turn 2: You use maneuver 2. At the end of the turn you are (randomly) granted maneuver 1.

Turn 3: You choose not to use a maneuver. At the end of the turn you are granted maneuver 4 because it's the only one left.

Turns 4: You use a maneuver (or not!). At the end of the turn you are randomly granted maneuvers 1 and 2, because you have two granted maneuvers as a level one Crusader, and because there were no more "withheld" maneuvers left to grant, so you basically reset.

Again, so SO sorry for confusing you with my houserule in my above posts. I'll go ahead and edit them to prevent further confusion.

[Tokiko Mima]

The easiest way to visualize martial adepts and especially the Crusader recovery mechanic is as cards, I think. Imagine you have all of your Known maneuvers available in a deck of cards, one maneuver per card.

By taking a short 5 minutes to meditate/exercise you can choose a number of those cards to be 'readied.' These will be available to you in combat until you have another 5 minutes to expend, so any cards that aren't readied can be set aside until then. Maneuvers you use in combat are 'expended' and can't be used until you refresh them somehow. This works exactly the same for all martial adept classes mechanics.

The Crusader has an additional step at this point, because they can't directly use readied maneuvers, because for them all readied maneuvers are initially considered 'withheld.' At the start of combat, a fixed number of cards are drawn at random from the withheld pile. The cards you draw out are 'granted' and can then be used at will. Maneuvers you use are still expended, and don't immediately go into the withheld pile. At the end of your turn, you randomly draw another card from the withheld pile and add it to your granted pile.

When you run out of withheld maneuvers, you can take all the cards from the expended pile and move them to being withheld. At that point you randomly draw out a pair to be granted, just as you did at the start of combat, and the process continues.

[Zytil]

Wouldn't the discard pile at that point effectively BE the deck? Also, it is completely valid for a power to be repeatedly granted without other powers ever coming up, so the deck analogy doesn't completely work.

Pretty sure you can't have multiple copies of the same maneuver granted at once. I could be crazy though, that happens a lot.

[weckar]

I'm the crazy one. I just went back to the book and have always played this wrong :smallredface:

[Yorrin]

I'm the crazy one. I just went back to the book and have always played this wrong :smallredface:

Glad I'm not the only one who's having to go back to the book :smallwink:
Seriously, even as a veteran Crusader the unnecessary steps in their refresh mechanic are needlessly complicated. Though the fact that combat doesn't normally last long enough for it to matter would be another explanation as to why we're not super-familiar with it...

[Zytil]

Though the fact that combat doesn't normally last long enough for it to matter would be another explanation as to why we're not super-familiar with it...

Really? I'm in a campaign with a crusader at the moment, and he has to refresh his maneuvers 2-3 times per combat. I guess that's why i remember the rules for it, it comes up a lot...

[Particle_Man]

If you do go Crusader, the feat Extra Granted Maneuver is very sweet. Also prestige classes often give the crusader an extra granted maneuver when they give an extra readied maneuver, which is nice too.

There is some complicated multi-class way to get a crusader that refreshes all of the maneuvers each round, but I think it is not robust (i.e. if you mess up one step you have a problem). Still, if that is your thing, I think you could search for "idiot crusader" or something like that.

Also, while maneuvers tend to be used in combat only, one could be in a stance all day long, and that often has nice out of combat uses. Even a different character entirely (like a rogue) is only two feats away from getting a stance.