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BardicDuelist
2007-10-14, 11:03 PM
So I pulled my friend's ToB, and I have to ask:
How does the Swordsage Casting Variant work (discussed under the Adaptation section)?

Do your spells renew like maneuvers? What stat do you use?

Any arcane spell (including bard's cure spells, etc)?

Did WotC ever clarify this? If they didn't, and you would allow it, how would you answer the above?

Reel On, Love
2007-10-14, 11:06 PM
Basically, it doesn't. Not only is it broken, it's incomplete--what's the "casting stat", for example? They do presumably renew like maneuvers (mm, Adaptive Style).

There is no clarification.

I would invent rules that tone it down--being able to spam arcane spells is pretty ridiculous. Even buffs alone (Bite of the Werebear, wooooo), and they can be kept going pretty much continuously.

Valairn
2007-10-14, 11:35 PM
Well you do have to add in the fact that over the course of a swordsages career, he has to sacrifice maneuvers to learn spells, of which even if he sacrificed every single maneuver he would only have 25 total spells, ever, without spending feats, this coupled with the fact that at any given time the swordsage is going to burn through his spells quicker than a wizard ever would, at 20th level he only has 12 spells readied at any given time, which even with adaptive style he then has to burn a WHOLE ROUND to just gaining back the ability to cast again. That's death to any caster worth his business.

Its arguably better than a sorcerer, but his spells are counted as maneuvers, which means he can't multi-class (arguably) into anything that has a spell casting requirement depending on the DM's ruling. Also, none of his class bonuses work towards increasing his spell casting potential, just his weapon potential and maneuvers.

Also arguably, the swordsage receives no benefit from metamagic. Which means compared to any wizard he's dead, plain and simple. Overall, the spell casting variant could accomplish more from dedicating his levels to maneuvers of which there are comparable maneuvers to many spells.

And even then compared to the standard gish cheesing you can accomplish, the variant swordsage is comparably weak, due to missing out on the the thing that makes spell casters so good in the first place, versatility. A wizard/fighter/eldritch knight is arguably better and that's the crappiest gish build ever.

I do agree that the spell-casting variant of the swordsage is broken, but not because its cheesy, it is a one trick wonder as far as cheese is concerned(arguably), but because its completely incomplete.

Also, if this seemed aggressive, it wasn't aimed at anyone in particular.

Hadrian_Emrys
2007-10-15, 12:09 AM
Pros:
Infinite use of a handful of arcane "spells".
"spells" do not provoke AoOs.
Can be assumed that Wis is the casting score given the focus of the class.

Cons:
Not real spells.
Cannot be Meta-Magicked.
Can be assumed that Int or Cha is the casting score given the nature of the abilities.

I like it a lot. My last two characters have been MystSwords. A transformer and a duelist. I hope that my next will be an arcane archer sans the suck. It's fun to toy with so long as you do not make abusive selections.

deadseashoals
2007-10-15, 01:21 AM
No, it really is completely broken (balance-wise). Like Reel On said, being able to spam arcane spells continuously is broken. Remember that maneuvers are designed to be spammable, while spells absolutely are not. Full round action to recover? Who cares, take time stop as one of your spells, it's a transmutation spell. If you want to use it in your game, fine, but don't pretend it's not broken.

Illiterate Scribe
2007-10-15, 01:43 AM
Exactly - take a warforged swordsage, and you can literally live your entire (eternal) life under a timestop - making delayed blast fireballs all the way.

TSGames
2007-10-15, 03:32 AM
So I pulled my friend's ToB, and I have to ask:
How does the Swordsage Casting Variant work (discussed under the Adaptation section)?

Do your spells renew like maneuvers? What stat do you use?

Any arcane spell (including bard's cure spells, etc)?

Did WotC ever clarify this? If they didn't, and you would allow it, how would you answer the above?
This variant is written like nearly everything else in D&D. Wizards provides the rules, but you have to add the common sense.

I can't tell you if it's good or not it's so vague that any number of interpretations could reasonably be taken. It all depends on how he DM handles it. It should have the potential to be decent, but not overpowered.