Quote Originally Posted by CockroachTeaParty View Post
First of all, it only effects allies within 30 ft. At level 17+, with your allies flying, teleporting, and moving around all crazy-like, it's going to take some serious planning to make sure all melee allies are within that close range.
Not at the start of an encounter, surely. As a battle goes on, yeah, this might become a concern.

Second, it requires an immediate action from your allies to charge. War Master's Charge is what you want to open a fight with. You want to start the battle with your heroic, powerful charge. However, you're playing a dangerous game, there. If you win initiative, that's your best chance to charge before the melee closes. However, your allies can't take immediate actions if they are flat-footed, so in order to get the most use out of the WMC, you'd want to delay until they've had a turn. You'd also better hope your allies go before the enemy has a chance to move. You could use White Raven Tactics to bring a single ally up in the initiative order, but that's just one person; you ideally want as many allies charging as possible on a WMC. Thus, your optimum initiative order to use it is if all your allies go before you, and choose to remain within 30 ft., but you go before the enemy. Do you see how hard that is to pull off?
At high levels, it seems quite likely that most creatures (allies and enemies alike) will spend their first action in combat to buff themselves, cast a spell, or fire a ranged attack.

Also, it depends how good your party's initiative is. If you have a Draconic Aura (senses), Belts of Battle and Rings of Anticipation on everyone, and the occasional Nerveskitter or Weapon of Warning, I'm not sure it's crazy to think your whole party could beat all the monsters in initiative.

And distance limitation notwithstanding, I still don't think this maneuver is useless later in a battle, either. Remember, in 3e there's no rule that a Charge action has to target the closest opponent. It's perfectly reasonable to use this maneuver to leave one monster behind and charge his friend, since you don't provoke attacks of opportunity during this charge (and can go through your allies' squares easily).

Third, a War Master's Charge can only target a single opponent.
Where are you getting that? You want at least one other person to hit the same target as you, so you can get the auto-stun effect. But I don't see any such restriction on the whole group.