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Fiery Diamond
2008-01-12, 10:02 AM
How broken is this?


-Fiery Diamond

Darth Mario
2008-01-12, 10:08 AM
Depends. The swordsage is balanced with casters, what classes are the others playing?

Ralfarius
2008-01-12, 10:20 AM
I'm with Darthmario on this one. Is the Swordsage with a bunch of non-ubercharger fighters? Or is there a smattering of cleric/druid/wizard in the rest of the party?

Against the former, he's 'more powerful' - but also more interesting to play, mechanically. Against the latter, the swordsage is a level of power 'approaching comparable'.

Felius
2008-01-12, 10:36 AM
As said depends on the rest of the classes, and how much of of powerplayers they are.

If the group is 5 nerfed monks, well, just play a warrior (not a fighter, too strong) and you will be on their level. If it's your general group, unoptimized but also not too weak, probably on the level of the druid and the cleric. If they are a optimized but not cheesed group, it's mostly ok. If it's a cheese group, with the most batman wizard you ever seen with levels in initiate of the sevenfold, a planar shepherd, a divine metamagic cheesed cleric, well, you will probably be the weakest member of the group.

Remember, just because it's core it doesn't mean it's not broken. :smallbiggrin:

tbarrie
2008-01-12, 01:24 PM
If the group is 5 nerfed monks, well, just play a warrior (not a fighter, too strong) and you will be on their level. If it's your general group, unoptimized but also not too weak, probably on the level of the druid and the cleric. If they are a optimized but not cheesed group, it's mostly ok. If it's a cheese group, with the most batman wizard you ever seen with levels in initiate of the sevenfold, a planar shepherd, a divine metamagic cheesed cleric, well, you will probably be the weakest member of the group.

Remember, just because it's core it doesn't mean it's not broken. :smallbiggrin:

Of course, being core does mean that it's not an Initiate of the Sevenfold, a Planar Shepherd, or a user of divine metamagic.

MeklorIlavator
2008-01-12, 01:53 PM
Of course, being core does mean that it's not an Initiate of the Sevenfold, a Planar Shepherd, or a user of divine metamagic.

Of course, just because the cheesiest PrC's aren't available doesn't mean that there isn't large amounts of cheese. See: Polymorph.

bugsysservant
2008-01-12, 02:02 PM
Well, there is next to no core melee-er cheese (not counting CoDzilla). And most of the cheese thats available to casters is available in core. Yes Wizard/Incantrix/IotSV may be a better build than Wizard/Loremaster/Archmage, but as much as most people make out. If you really do optimize the latter build in core, pretty much the only thing that will kill you will be a similarly optimized wizard outside of core. So, I would put a Swordsage on par with a reasonably played cleric or druid. Its good, but its not game breakingly so, unless your DM was already allowing magic wielders to shatter the game.

skywalker
2008-01-12, 02:20 PM
I played a swordsage in a party with a duskblade, a warlock, and a rogue who were all level five. While the duskblade and the rogue were new and a part time player, and thus severly outshone by the swordsage, the swordsage and the warlock tended to be about even in power and "spotlight time." Both the warlock and the duskblade are supposedly higher powered than your average core class, and the rogue obviously is core.

This perceived domination by the swordsage probably came from the fact that my DM likes to focus less on combat and doesn't seem to know how to lock doors, to the point that the swordsage pretty much replaced the rogue as the scout. In combat, however, the duskblade and warlock(surprisingly) were clearly more effective overall.

Chronicled
2008-01-12, 09:48 PM
Both the warlock and the duskblade are supposedly higher powered than your average core class

The duskblade, yes. The warlock? Heavens, no.

Wordmiser
2008-01-12, 10:18 PM
If the group is 5 nerfed monks, well, just play a warrior (not a fighter, too strong)A Fighter really isn't a whole lot better than a Monk in Core: After level 2 or 4, the Fighter pretty much runs out of class abilities (Combat Expertise, Combat Reflexes, Improved Trip, Power Attack).

I wouldn't say that this would lead to a broken game--The Bard, Cleric, Druid, Rogue, Sorcerer and Wizard will probably be at or beyond the Swordsage's power. The Barbarian, Fighter, Paladin and Ranger will be displaced, though.

Question:Is Adaptive Style banned?

Seffbasilisk
2008-01-12, 11:22 PM
In my IRL campaign now, I have a Bard, a Warmage, a Rogue, a Cleric, and rarely present Swashbuckler and a similarly ne'er there Paladin. The Swordsage addition to the group shows some power...but is outmatched in blasting by the warmage, outmatched in sneaky by the rogue, and outmatched in melee damage output by the Rogue and the Paladin. His AC on the other hand....

Fiery Diamond
2008-01-13, 12:43 AM
Thanks a lot for the feedback. I actually am the DM for this campaign, and this player is the only one with a noncore class; monsters and items available are almost all from core. So are most of the spells used by people. The party consists of a lvl5 rogue/lvl 1 assassin, Lvl 2 Ftr/lvl 3 Clr, Lvl 6 Sor, Lvl 6 Monk (doing pretty decently, actually), and a Lvl 6 Brd. And of course, the Swordsage. I wanted to know whether this would become unbalanced; as the player is just starting to use some of the more powerful abilities at that level. My guess, more or less confirmed by you, is that this character would be on par with a full-caster in terms of power (I get the idea that they were created with that intent).
Again, thanks a bunch.

-Fiery Diamond