Bardblade vs Bardsader

[prufock]

I have seen these two general builds (bard/warblade and bard/crusader) suggested on the boards many times, with a main focus on Song of the White Raven and other maneuvers from that discipline. So the simple question is: which is better, and why?

[Thrice Dead Cat]

It honestly comes down to which schools of maneuvers you want. I personally prefer Crusader with a Bard 6/Crusader 14 split, using some of the Eberron ACFs to trade out unwanted songs for feats. Assuming you'd use the same level of Warblade or Crusader - and especially at lower Iniataor levels - you'll also have a larger pool of maneuvers known with Crusader, even if that means fitting Extra Granted Maneuver into one of your feat slots to help with the random nature of which maneuvers you get to have ready.

[Darrin]

I have seen these two general builds (bard/warblade and bard/crusader) suggested on the boards many times, with a main focus on Song of the White Raven and other maneuvers from that discipline. So the simple question is: which is better, and why?

It depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

Bard 4/Warblade 16: Access to Tiger Claw and Diamond Mind, so if you're just looking for whoopass from an individual standpoint: Punishing Stance, Iron Heart Surge, Pouncing Charge, Dancing/Raging Mongoose + Time Stands Still. If you go with either TWF or Archery, Bardblade is Top Dawg dishing out DPS.

Bard 4/Crusader 16: Better tank, better Will save, Mettle. More standard action strikes, but can attack and heal with the same standard action. More likely to choose strikes that help the party rather than dish out individual DPS. More likely to focus on force multipliers rather than individual multipliers. Tends to work harder making the entire party better. A Bardsader with a party optimized around him could obliterate a similar party with a Bardblade.

[Chronos]

My thought is that if you're playing a bard-whatever, it's because you want to support the whole party, and crusader is better for that, between better lockdown options for tanking, and healing.

[WhamBamSam]

Bardblades also can use Undersong to make Diamond Mind stuff key off of Perform. That's sort of a nice thing.

[Fax Celestis]

You also can use Bardic Sage to make bard int dependent for synergy when bard blading.