Was there a mistake in the Warblade's stance progression?

[Windrammer]

I can't find any word from Wizards on this beyond some guy's one-line anecdote here:
http://i.imgur.com/TflNsnY.png

It just seems really, really strange if it's not a misprint.

At level 4 you learn a new stance.
One level BEFORE new stances become available to you.
You don't get to learn your next stance until a whole new set of stances are available, at level 10.
You effectively skip your level 3 stances, which seem to be of appropriate power for a level 5 character to learn.

It's not like this was done to avoid Warblades getting stances that were intended for the other classes to get instead, because an Iron Heart stance is right there. Absolute Steel Stance. Clearly these were intended to be options for Warblades, but they may as well be null, as the stances that are available by the time you learn that third stance are decidedly superior.

What gives? Has anyone Wizards officially acknowledged this issue at any point, or is it wholly a debate among the players?

[DeltaEmil]

It is most assuredly a mistake.

But there will never be an official errata to it, because Wizards of the Coast doesn't care about it anymore.

The official errata for example turns midway into an errata for Complete Mage.

[atemu1234]

And yet it's still better than fighter/barbarian/paladin...

[Darrin]

It's widely regarded as a mistake. Either that, or a misguided attempt to get more people to play Swordsages.

WotC may have screwed the pooch on the official errata, but there's an Unofficial ToB Errata project (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=335.0) over on the minmax boards that fixes most of the egregious stuff.

[Chronos]

IIRC, crusaders have the same issue. You can get around it by dipping a couple of levels in another class before that level, similarly to how beguilers et al sometimes dip prestige classes to delay Advanced Learning. It's even possible that this was done deliberately, to encourage users of those classes to multiclass.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I allow Warblades in my game to get the stance at level 4 or 5 (for those multiclassing, the mistake can be a boon and it'd be mean to take that away in an attempt to "help").

In other peoples' games, if they insist on RAW, I'll often just dip 2 levels in full BAB classes to make the progression fit. Or just take another level 1...the level 3 Warblade stances aren't that amazing unless you go heavy into the jump-based offense. Plus ten FEET to jumps is pretty impressive.

And yeah, Crusader is the same issues, except it applies to at least two of their stances, and the disparity is even larger for level gained vs. level you qualify.