swordsage maneuver/meditation question

[shay7815]

according to the rules, a swordsage can regain a maneuver after mediating for 1 round.
can he mediate during battle? can the meditation be interrupted? does it invoke an AOO if there are closeby enemies.
does it make sense to have him do a concentration check if interrupted? thats what the DM suggested.
where failure means the maneuver do not get regained.

[Red Fel]

according to the rules, a swordsage can regain a maneuver after mediating for 1 round.
can he mediate during battle? can the meditation be interrupted? does it invoke an AOO if there are closeby enemies.
does it make sense to have him do a concentration check if interrupted? thats what the DM suggested.
where failure means the maneuver do not get regained.

"Meditate" isn't a defined action. Rather, it's a description of a one-round action that a Swordsage can perform - yes, in combat, because that's where rounds live - to recover his maneuvers.

Read the description, under Maneuvers Readied: You perform a full round action to "meditate" and recover one maneuver (or more if you paid your feat tax). Doing so does not provoke attacks of opportunity. No skill check or Concentration required. It's just a description. They could have said "whistle a happy tune" or "think about butterflies" for all the difference it makes.

[shay7815]

thanks for the reply, not sure the DM will like it though... the main issue is that it isnt detailed enough what exactly the miditation entails.... dm said something like doing yoga in the middle of battle without being interrupted doesnt make sense...

[Red Fel]

thanks for the reply, not sure the DM will like it though... the main issue is that it isnt detailed enough what exactly the miditation entails.... dm said something like doing yoga in the middle of battle without being interrupted doesnt make sense...

Then replace "meditation" with "think about butterflies." Because that's all it is - it's a phrase describing, briefly, what you do with your full round action to recover maneuvers.

Look, some things actually require a Concentration check. Like recovering your Psionic Focus. That's explicitly called out (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/skills/concentration.htm) in the mechanics:
If you have 1 or more power points available, you can meditate to attempt to become psionically focused. The DC to become psionically focused is 20. Meditating is a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity.
That's explicit. Swordsage maneuver recovery does not contain such language. It simply says you take a full round action to "meditate" (or "think about butterflies") to recover a maneuver (or more if you paid your feat tax). No Concentration checks, no AoOs. Just take a full round action to do nothing, and get maneuvers afterwards.

If your DM doesn't like it, he can make a house rule. I think it's a bit absurd, since Swordsage maneuver recovery suffers enough with a feat tax, but as DM he's entitled to do that. But by RAW, you're just taking a full round action to do nothing; it's not necessarily yoga, it explicitly doesn't provoke AoOs, it's just a nondescript full round action which, for lack of a better term, they called "meditation."

[Shining Wrath]

What you do is take Adaptive Style and get them all back, rather than just one, when you meditate. And be able to swap them around when you do, exchanging which ones are readied.

Adaptive Style:Swordsage::Natural Spell:Druid. People will point and laugh if you don't take it.

Anyway, you're a swordsage. You can meditate while in combat. You can meditate while dodging the attacks of all 5 of Tiamat's heads on a floor littered with caltrops. Why? Because you are All That.

[Chronos]

Actually, what you do is just forget about recovering maneuvers during battle, because even Adaptive Style isn't good enough to be worth spending a feat on plus burning a full round whenever you want to recover maneuvers. When you run out of good maneuvers in combat (if the combat even lasts long enough for that to happen), use your less-good maneuvers, and when you run out of those, you've still got your stance plus ordinary attacks. Any of those are better than giving up a full round of actions.

If you want Adaptive Style for the option of changing out your readied maneuvers on the fly, that might make the feat worthwhile, but it'll still be extremely rare for it to be worthwhile in combat for recovering maneuvers.