[3.5] What can a Warblade offer that a Malconvoker's summonling can't?

[Endarire]

My groupmates are pondering this. If an optimized Conjurer5/Malconvoker5 (Complete Scoundrel 48) has all the appropriate summonling buffs (Augment Summoning, Ehlonna's Brooch, Fury, Worldmeet Glade, and Fiendish Legion), what can a human Warblade10 fairly offer that's significantly better?

I've been through Tome of Battle and read the Warblade's abilities and maneuvers. Save swap maneuvers, Iron Heart Surge, White Raven Tactics, and Hearing the Air (30' Blindsight) are seemingly his best tricks.

[Toliudar]

Well, yes. But I believe we've covered this.

The obvious answer, to me, is: their ideas. Either the warblade is a PC, or an NPC hanging around with the group. Having another perspective on a problem, someone to talk things out with, is usually much more helpful than more muscle.

Aside from the maneuvers that you list, you can also add into consideration WBL gear, and the ability to hang around and contribute all day long.

[Force]

You're comparing a Tier 3 character to a T1 (possibly high-end T2) class. There's not much contest.

Granted, the T3 character has the advantage of probably being faster to play than the T1 and his legions of summoned minions...

[Jayabalard]

You're comparing a Tier 3 character to a T1 (possibly high-end T2) class. There's not much contest.

He's not comparing the warblade to the malconvoker itself...

[Toliudar]

Really? Well, then, the answer is: "to stick around for more than two minutes."

[Beelzebub1111]

Staying Power. The warblade can go all day, the wizard will eventually run out of spells and force the party to rest. This is especially handy for multi-floor dungeon crawls.

[Jayabalard]

Really? Well, then, the answer is: "to stick around for more than two minutes."

I mean, that's how I read his question (the summonling)

[SurlySeraph]

Staying power, versatility once present (he'll usually have more versatility with his maneuvers than any particular summon has in its abilities), some useful skills that neither the Malconvoker nor his summons are likely to have (Knowledge [local] and Martial Lore, for example), reliability (Warblades don't disappear in antimagic fields and can't be banished), its own WBL for any handy items the Malconvoker can't afford, and a guard that you can keep with you at all times without arousing suspicion or getting torch-wielding peasants after you.

[Endarire]

Warblade Benefits
The main things I've heard are Iron Heart Surge, White Raven Tactics, and separate wealth by level. These are true.

From a pure melee perspective, let's compare.

The Malconvoker
A Conjurer5/Malconvoker5 with Augment Summoning, Ehlonna's Brooch, Fury, and Worldmeet glade gets this on his Evil summons:

Summonling Bonuses
+7 HP/HD
+6 melee damage. (+4 on other weapon damage, and +2 on spell damage.)
+4 melee accuracy
+2 Fortitude
+2 on saves, skill checks, and all other d20 rolls. (I also account for this +2 in the melee accuracy.)

And he gets 2 of these things.

Sample Stat Summary: Fiendish Giant Crocodile
Huge Animal; 15' space but only 10' reach
106 HP
16 AC, 9 Touch AC, 15 Flat
Bite: Overcomes DR/Magic, +15 accuracy, 2d8+18 damage (plus Improved Grab and a +25 Grapple modifier)
Fort +13, Ref +8, Will +5
Other misc. bonuses

And he gets 2 of these things.

[Toliudar]

Endarire, I'm assuming that you're saying that a well-equipped summoner can bring in a creature that can stand toe-to-toe in combat with a warblade and stand a good chance of winning. If that's your point...okay. I don't feel like crunching the numbers. I believe you. I like summoners a lot, and I think they're great.

Is there a larger point that you're trying to make? Because we offered the things that are actually advantages of the warblade - the fact that they're real, a person contributing to the game, are there to react when an unexpected situation happens, and have wealth by level - and the only one of these points that you acknowledged are WBL.

[Smiling Knight]

{Scrubbed]

[JeminiZero]

I've been through Tome of Battle and read the Warblade's abilities and maneuvers. Save swap maneuvers, Iron Heart Surge, White Raven Tactics, and Hearing the Air (30' Blindsight) are seemingly his best tricks.

More precisely, they are his most obvious tricks, based on taking each maneuver or stance on its own merit. You would obviously need to pull off a some optimization-fu of putting the bits together to form a greater sum, to get him to punch on par with a Fiendish Dire Crocodile, let alone an optimized Malconvoker.

For example, lets say you have a Dragonborn Warblade with:
-Leading the Charge Stance
-Pouncing Charge

At this level, Dragonborn lets him fly for 10 minutes per day, and more importantly, allows him to execute a Diving attack on a charge to deal double damage with a piercing weapon. He can hence use this with Leading the Charge and Pouncing Charge for semi-ubercharger damage. Note that this setup is *reasonably* low on investment in that it does not require anything more than a racial template (and an admittedly solid one at that given how it provides flight, the one thing Warblades can't do well), as well as one stance and maneuver.

Example with Numbers: Lets say our Dragonborn has 18 Str, which is kinda piddly for a Warblade at this level. While attacking 2 handed with a halberd, he deals 1d10+6 damage base, or 11.5 on average. On a Pounce, he adds Leading the Charge for +10, and can double all of that with a Diving Charge for 43 per hit. He can attack as many times as his iterative allows (2x default at this level, 3x if he gets haste).

And all this is without power attack or weapon enhancement yet (and he could probably do with a lot better than 18 str). Power Attack in this case adds +4 per -1, due to double damage from 2 hander and double that damage from diving charge. Ergo, a Warblade thus optimized could realistically drop 1 crocodile in 1 round.

Besides that, all the above Diamond Saves/IHS tricks come into play, letting the Warblade shrug off effects that could cripple the Malconvoker.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Also, Warblade brings additional utility with Clarion Call (feat), activating sneak attacks for all flanker-types in the party.

Plus, Rabid Mongoose + Time Stands Still... yes, I have a two-handed sword that I'm full-power-attacking with. With more attacks than most TWFing builds. For full Shock Trooper level damage.

Plus, a Warblade can be build more than halfway competently. Something which most summoned critters can't say for themselves. Even with raw number boosts.

[Ytaker]

Staying Power. The warblade can go all day, the wizard will eventually run out of spells and force the party to rest. This is especially handy for multi-floor dungeon crawls.

The warblade has limited healing magic. Since we're around level 10 here, the summoner will probably have enough juice to outlast the healing of the priest who has an entire party to heal and buffs to cast.

Fighters are just inherently inferior to casters.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The warblade has limited healing magic. Since we're around level 10 here, the summoner will probably have enough juice to outlast the healing of the priest who has an entire party to heal and buffs to cast.

Fighters are just inherently inferior to casters.

Warblade has a lot of ways to be not hurt in the first place, starting off with around a 1k damage potential per round to keep opponents from hurting him, and ways to flat guarantee he'll go first against anything except a Wizard specifically tailored to go first.

[Ytaker]

And Malco can summon a lot of creatures. If the warblade is lucky he might outlast him, but only by draining a lot of clerical magic.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

And Malco can summon a lot of creatures. If the warblade is lucky he might outlast him, but only by draining a lot of clerical magic.

Kinda hard to hurt the warblade when you're dead...

[Last Laugh]

And Malco can summon a lot of creatures. If the warblade is lucky he might outlast him, but only by draining a lot of clerical magic.

I seem to remember that Malconvoker's can summon unicorns, or some creature with healing abilities. Can anyone verify this? (let's assume arcane)

[Ytaker]

Kinda hard to hurt the warblade when you're dead...

Generally encounters are designed with multiple enemies, and often have a mix of ranged and melee opponents.

Also, 1000 damage a round is a bit optimistic for a level 10 warblade, isn't it?

Also, unicorns- summon nature ally 4, druid spell.

[JeminiZero]

And Malco can summon a lot of creatures. If the warblade is lucky he might outlast him, but only by draining a lot of clerical magic.

At this level of optimization, either the Cleric has already persisted mass lesser vigor on the whole party, or else they have some other infinite out of combat healing trick.

[Elfin]

Three words, my friend.
Iron Heart Suuuurge!

[Beelzebub1111]

The point I was trying to make was that, in a Multi-level Dungeon (RtCG, RttToEE, etc.) a fighting class like warblade would be able to get through more rooms while the wizard is starting to run out of spells and having to rest\

Not that one would outlast the other in a one on one fight.

[MeeposFire]

Also, Warblade brings additional utility with Clarion Call (feat), activating sneak attacks for all flanker-types in the party.

Plus, Rabid Mongoose + Time Stands Still... yes, I have a two-handed sword that I'm full-power-attacking with. With more attacks than most TWFing builds. For full Shock Trooper level damage.

Plus, a Warblade can be build more than halfway competently. Something which most summoned critters can't say for themselves. Even with raw number boosts.

How are you full power attacking and hitting? Nothing you mentioned gives you your attack bonus back...unless you are fighting against mooks with no AC/miss chance.

I do agree that a well made warblade is generally better than summons.

[Ytaker]

The point I was trying to make was that, in a Multi-level Dungeon (RtCG, RttToEE, etc.) a fighting class like warblade would be able to get through more rooms while the wizard is starting to run out of spells and having to rest\

That's not necessarily true. A warblade has limited health, just as a summoner has limited spells. A wizard can use a few spells to dominate an encounter, and keep going through a lot of rooms. This prestige class is especially good at using less spells as they have a special ability that means they summon 1+creatures.

Also, the wizard is fighting at a much higher level than the fighter, being tier 1. They can simply use their lower level spell slots to fight at a similar level to fighters if they run out of high level spells.

[Kyuu Himura]

OK, so, it is warblade vs summoned muscle, right??

If you mean that as it is written, that is, that you compare a 10th level warblade with a creature you summon for fighting and taking hits for you The warblade comes out on top. Fighting creatures are like Fighters, probably with better numbers. I see this crock of yours and offer you the next strategy....

By level 10 a human warblade can take all of the next feats:
Power Attack (1)
Improved Bull Rush (human)
Stand Still (3)
Ironheart Aura (bonus)
Storm Guard Warrior (by level 6)
Shock Trooper (9)
And a bonus... I don't know, I would go for Imp. Initiative, Combate Reflexes or Blind Fight

Said human warblade with 20 strenght (modest, in my opinion) and a +1 Iron heart and Diamond Mind longspear gets an attack roll of +19, 1d8+8 damage. Now, in the first round of combat he can use the Leading the Charge stance with a Bounding Assault Strike to get an attack roll of +23, he can power attack for full for a +23 and -10 AC; 1d8+38 damage, with bounding assault, he can charge in any direction and even tumble, so the crock doesn't get an AoO, there is a 95% chance that the crock takes an average of 42 damage, almost half it's hit points. The warblade still has his swift action for a wall of blades, since it is an Iron Heart Maneuver, he gets a +2 on that for a total +25, So it's quite possible that the crock doesn't get to bite him.
In round 2, Warblade changes to Dancing blade form with a swift action and then uses Ruby nightmare Blade and power attacks for full, the Concentration check should be easy, since any warblade maximizes concentration, 13 ranks and a humble 16 CON tells that this check doesn't fail. The attack roll should be like a +13 (85% chance of hitting), damage becomes (1d8+28) x2, for an average of 64, if we add that to the 42 it had already taken, we have 106 damage. Crock poofs away.

The warblade, while numerically inferior, has many options the crock lacks, and can dish out good damage even without the improved grab thing.

[Flickerdart]

Ok, it takes the Warblade two rounds to kill the thing. While two are chomping on his face (or grappling with their impressive modifiers) and a wizard is somewhere doing wizardy things. Warblade is significantly down on action advantage here unless he can act before the crocodiles are summoned.

[Kyuu Himura]

wasn't it a 10th level caster?? that's summon monster 5 if I'm right... so only 1 crock....

[Ytaker]

They get 1+ evil creatures. Which is very overpowered.

[Kyuu Himura]

Also... it wasn't warblade vs summoner, it was Warblade vs Summoned creature. I think I proved that a Warblade can fight better than a summon, of course, an army of the things eat the warblade, but an army of the things eat pretty much everything but a caster of the same tier than the summoner...

[Kyuu Himura]

Also... pouncing charge (instead of bounding assault), a potion of haste (previously ingested, or dancing mongoose, that works too) and leap attack instead stormguard warrior could kill a croc in one round.

The sequence would be +23/+23/+18 at 1d8+48 each.... ouch.

I suppose the malconvoker could summon 2 of this bad boys every round, but then it is not the crock that outperforms the warblade, it is the caster summoning it, which we already knew was the case, as I put in my sign...