Crusader maneuver renewal

[molten_dragon]

My players and I are all big fans of the tome of battle, but no one ever wants to play a crusader because of the complicated manner in which they get maneuvers. So I'm considering letting them renew maneuvers in the same manner as a warblade. I'm just wondering if anyone else has done this, or if you think it will unbalance the class or ruin the flavor of it. Any thoughts?

[Irreverent Fool]

My players and I are all big fans of the tome of battle, but no one ever wants to play a crusader because of the complicated manner in which they get maneuvers. So I'm considering letting them renew maneuvers in the same manner as a warblade. I'm just wondering if anyone else has done this, or if you think it will unbalance the class or ruin the flavor of it. Any thoughts?

Crusaders normally don't recover expended maneuvers until they have been granted all of their readied maneuvers. Warblades renew all of their maneuvers with a single swift action following an attack or as a standard action.

As long as freshly-readied maneuvers are added to the 'withheld' pool, I don't think it changes things too much, but it opens up the possibility for a crusader to use the same maneuver every other round, like warblades can, something they can't normally do on their own. If you really want to give them a new recovery method, simply advise your player take Adaptive Style which re-readies all of your maneuvers in addition to letting you swap out your readied maneuvers.

I've had the same problem, but I don't really think it's that complicated if you use the maneuver cards available on the wizards site.

• Print all of your maneuvers on cards
• Take your readied maneuvers, shuffle them, and put them in a stack
• Draw two cards at the beginning of combat
• Draw a new one each round
• Discard any expended maneuver cards
• If you can't draw a new maneuver card, shuffle the discards and use them to restock your stack, then draw a new one when appropriate

obnoxious
sig

[Critical]

Seriously? Their recovery is awesome... Just use the maneuver cards, and it's going to be easy.

[Rad]

The Crusader recovery method is very easy to implement with cards. It is the best recovery method for the action economy because it is free: you just wait for it to happen every 3 rounds (2 if you took the feat to have one more granted maneuver).
The Warblade mechanic is good but not as good. On the other hand it has more control. You always have your opener move if you want it.
If your party is not absessed with rules minutiae and optimization at the level of the CO boards I'd say no problem.
On the player side, when I tried the crusader I liked it that I would not do the same thing every combat because my "hand" would be slightly different. Having to wait for one round or two to have the "inspiration" for your move was not that awful thematically even. I'd give it a try, maybe in an arena combat out of the main campaign if the group has continuity issues; as unthematically as the mechanic feels, it does have its perks in practice.

[molten_dragon]

To be more specific, I'm talking about getting rid of the whole idea of withheld and granted maneuvers. Crusaders would simply have whatever maneuvers they had readied and could renew them all with a swift action (followed up by an attack or doing nothing) like a warblade.

To address some of the other points made, I realize that from an optimization standpoint, getting maneuvers back for free is a nice benefit, but we've all agreed that it's more complicated than we want to deal with, and the warblade renewal method seems to work well.

As another note, we have had a couple people try out a crusader for a few levels, both with and without the maneuver cards. They both complained that even with the cards it was too complicated.

[Escheton]

That would make it overpowered. Having the massive heal or dr overcoming one every other round is not what the class is intended on having. They have powerfull moves that get crazy when you can pick and choose when you have them, not just which you have.
furthermore, that card system makes it hella fun. It's like magic and waiting those few rounds for the combofinisher because your hp are getting dangerously close to 0. It adds suspence and chance and is generally awesome.

[Toliudar]

On the other hand - you know what you don't like, and have an idea to change it to what you do like. I say...let us know how it goes.