[3.5 ToB] Swapping Schools

[DragoonWraith]

The thing is, with as many maneuvers as Swordsages have, they don't really need Recovery that much. They burn through a couple per turn and generally have enough gas to last them the whole combat. That and Adaptive Style helps quite a bit anyways.

Often, this is not actually the case. High level Swordsages can very definitely burn through all of their maneuvers. And even with Adaptive Style, if a combat ever reaches a point where a Swordsage must recover, he has been less powerful in that combat than a Warblade or Crusader would have been, by default. That's a pretty serious disadvantage.

This depends on level, types of adversaries and the amount of trouble pumping it takes. Generally, the argument against AC is that it's too expensive to buff it to really relevant numbers to fight martial opponents with it. SS is quite a bit better off than your average class here.

A bit but not enough.

Str/Con-based SS is perfectly doable. You need Heavy Armor Prof (prolly from Crusader or Fighter), but you're fine that way; sure, you don't get Wis to AC or damage, but that's no less than anyone else gets.

So another couple of tax feats, or you miss out on that capstone? Great deal.

That said, that's not what I was really going at. The point is, even without school exclusivity, SS's ability to go Wis-exclusive means there's plenty of reasons to play SSs. You said there wouldn't be a reason to play SS over Warblade or Crusader, I'm covering the cases where that's most definitely not true here.

I'm not understanding this? You mean someone who is already Wis-based could multiclass Swordsage? OK, that I'll buy. Still an unnecessary nerf to Swordsages.

*shrug* 6 schools gives you automatic access to Master of the Nine. Also, many schools have great low-level dip maneuvers like Wall of Blades, White Raven Tactics, Flame's Blessing or Counter Charge, making access to them beneficial even if you don't actually pick anything much from there. And yeah, Warblade capstone is better, but SS one is plenty powerful too.

Master of the Nine is incredibly painful to get into, despite being quite good. That's a lot of trash feats. Plus I'm pretty sure Mot9 works out better if you've multiclassed before you take it.

Yes, there are some good dip maneuvers. These are nice. But even a Swordsage is going to have a hard time readying all of them, because you still would prefer to use your higher level ones.

Yeah, this is true but I've built plenty a Swordsages with just the Shadow Blink from Shadow Hand and don't feel them gimped. Let's remember that Stone Dragon isn't entirely useless either; it has Mountain Hammer-line along with Roots of the Mountain and such.

I didn't really say they were gimped, I said this change makes them strictly inferior to Crusaders and Warblades (which they arguably already were, but now there's very little argument about it), and removes the one thing they could do that the others couldn't, which was the Concealment and Teleport tricks that Shadow Hand offers.

Optimization-wise, this may be true; but for a lot of my ToB character concepts, Stone Dragon is very appropriate thematically and is highly prized.

Really? I never found it to be. If I ever get a chance to make that Ironsoul Forgemaster//Deepstone Sentinel, maybe then, but at least thus far I've yet to make a Martial Adept that took any maneuvers from Stone Dragon, there never seemed any good reason to.