Prestige classes for TOB classes

[togapika]

In general what are good prestige classes to take for the tome of battle classes (Crusader, Warblade, Swordsage)

[Nebo_]

Practically anything that's martially inclined. Multiclassing works really well with ToB.

[Albonor]

But won't it stop the maneuver and stance progression?

[Talya]

Mo9 is the obvious one.

I am not fond of most of the ToB PrCs...they're very specific and very limiting. One of the great things about ToB though is that the base classes multiclass extremely well with almost any melee build, so any standard Melee PrC still works well when you mix in a few levels of swordsage or warblade.

If you want a specific idea in a martial adept PrC, you almost always have to homebrew it.

Speaking of which, plug for my martial adept blackguard:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84058

[Eldariel]

All the ToB Prestige Classes work really well; they have almost no qualification requirements outside having maneuvers so they're extremely easy to enter and there's a good variety of them for different purposes. Bloodclaw Master is great for TWF-build, Mo9 is just great overall, Ruby Knight Vindicator is one of the best Divine PrCs and Jade Phoenix Mage is a decent Arcane one. Eternal Blade is just awesome and Deepstone Warden is quite playable too.

Non-ToB Prestiges are pretty open too as said thanks to the fact that your IL has ½ advancement regardless of the class so taking a non-ToB Prestige and multiclassing back into a ToB-class midway through gets you a nice higher level stances/maneuvers. Martial Study/Stance works too.

[Talya]

All the ToB Prestige Classes work really well; they have almost no qualification requirements outside having maneuvers so they're extremely easy to enter and there's a good variety of them for different purposes. Bloodclaw Master is great for TWF-build, Mo9 is just great overall, Ruby Knight Vindicator is one of the best Divine PrCs and Jade Phoenix Mage is a decent Arcane one. Eternal Blade is just awesome and Deepstone Warden is quite playable too.

Ruby Knight Vindicator is the only divine-themed ToB PrC, and absolutely requires cleric levels. If that's what you're aiming for, it's damn good. (other than the "Wee Jas" requirement. What's with the super-specific fluff here for generic PrCs?)

Eternal Blade is great. Too bad it's elf-only.
Deepstone Warden is dwarf only. Same issue.

Mo9 has insane requirements, making the only viable way into it an unarmed swordsage variant, but it's damn good.

[Meat Shield]

What, no love for the Shadow Sun Ninja? If you want a sneaky guy, thats the way to go.

[Talya]

What, no love for the Shadow Sun Ninja? If you want a sneaky guy, thats the way to go.

It also makes for a kickass monk.

2 monk, 8 swordsage, 10 SSN (not necessarily in that order.)

Heck, go raptoran, and take VoP (one of the rare cases where it works.)

[Meat Shield]

It also makes for a kickass monk.

2 monk, 8 swordsage, 10 SSN (not necessarily in that order.)

Heck, go raptoran, and take VoP (one of the rare cases where it works.)

I'd go VoP Unarmed Strike variant Swordsage3/Monk2/SSN8/Swordsage2/Mo95 (I think I got the build right). Ultimate in mobility and sneaky with the right maneuvers. (I think the last two levels in SSN are not needed - better to go with SS for the extra maneuvers). And adding Raptoran to the whole thing would make for someone very tough to kill and when the PCs finally (if ever) do, they get no loot from it. Lovely!

[Hyooz]

ToB classes also make great gestalt fodder. They can turn almost anything into pure gold.

Every played a Soulknife//Swordsage? No? Go do it. It's awesome.

[Eldariel]

Ruby Knight Vindicator is the only divine-themed ToB PrC, and absolutely requires cleric levels. If that's what you're aiming for, it's damn good. (other than the "Wee Jas" requirement. What's with the super-specific fluff here for generic PrCs?)

Paladin/Crusader can take it too. And yea, it's annoying to have such tight flavour restrictions, but luckily flavour is infinitely mutable.

[Talya]

Paladin/Crusader can take it too. And yea, it's annoying to have such tight flavour restrictions, but luckily flavour is infinitely mutable.

While paladin can, it would suck. Which means I should have said, "absolutely required to make an effective RKV." If you're going to advance divine spellcasting, make it spellcasting that matters.

[Zenos]

Paladin/Crusader can take it too. And yea, it's annoying to have such tight flavour restrictions, but luckily flavour is infinitely mutable.

Yeah. I never imagine my Bloodclaw master turning into something similar to a tiger. I just imagine him getting realy, realy pissed off.

[Vortling]

In general what are good prestige classes to take for the tome of battle classes (Crusader, Warblade, Swordsage)

Bloodstorm Blade (ToB) is loads of fun for the greatsword throwing silliness. It's a neat way to let the warblade have fun against flying opponents.

[Eldariel]

While paladin can, it would suck. Which means I should have said, "absolutely required to make an effective RKV." If you're going to advance divine spellcasting, make it spellcasting that matters.

RKV has worthy abilities even just for a martial adept though. If it had no divine casting whatsoever, it'd still be a solid class just for extra Swift Actions (massive boosts, anyone?), instant recovery (sweet) and an awesome bunch of schools (Crusader + Shadow Hand = Win). Oh yeah, and a good skill list, Armored Hiding without ACP and 4 skills/level; mostly just a Crusader with a bunch of bonuses and very low entry requirements. If you want optimal RKV, you need Cleric, but even without Divine Casting, the class kicks ass.

[Chronos]

Bloodstorm Blade (ToB) is loads of fun for the greatsword throwing silliness. It's a neat way to let the warblade have fun against flying opponents.

Alternately, and this might be of interest to the OP, heavy shield throwing. Throw a shield at a bunch of monsters, have it bounce off of all of them in order, and then bounce back to your arm afterwards, ready to block any counterattack. Sound like anyone you can think of?

[AslanCross]

Ruby Knight Vindicator is the only divine-themed ToB PrC, and absolutely requires cleric levels. If that's what you're aiming for, it's damn good. (other than the "Wee Jas" requirement. What's with the super-specific fluff here for generic PrCs?)

Eternal Blade is great. Too bad it's elf-only.
Deepstone Warden is dwarf only. Same issue.

Mo9 has insane requirements, making the only viable way into it an unarmed swordsage variant, but it's damn good.

Well if your DM's reasonable you can ask him to let you bypass the fluff requirements somewhat by making your character a disciple of a member of those races. As for RKV, I figured that if you were playing FR, renaming it "Fugue Knight Vindicator" and aligning it with Kelemvor's church worked well too, with "Eradicate undeath. Kill necromancers and undeath-spreading entities." as their MO.

Alternately, and this might be of interest to the OP, heavy shield throwing. Throw a shield at a bunch of monsters, have it bounce off of all of them in order, and then bounce back to your arm afterwards, ready to block any counterattack. Sound like anyone you can think of?

It sounds like an excuse for a character to use the line "All who choose to oppose my shield must yield!"

[togapika]

I know the TOB prestige classes in the book are good, but I was also wondering about non-TOB prestige classes that mesh well with TOB classes. The one main one I can think of would be Kensai, but I was looking for others as well.

[Eldariel]

Depends on how you build your character and how high martial maneuvers you want. A Dervish can incorporate ToB quite well thanks to a bunch of solid TWF boosts available at lower levels. All Chargers like Frenzied Berserker can utilize some Charge-maneuvers (White Raven, Tiger Claw and Devoted Spirit mostly) and overall, most martial prestige classes work quite well with ToB-classes thanks to the ½ progression you get to Initiator Level during non-ToB levels.

Periodic dips can give the character access to higher level maneuvers from the ToB-class. However, there aren't too many worthy non-ToB martial prestige classes. The ones that are good do tend to work with some degree of ToB quite well though. Magical classes understandably work worse since the loss of caster levels is such a huge drawback. That's why you really want dual progression to make that work without being hopelessly behind in spell levels.

[D Knight]

i just looked at Kensai and you should have a nice weaponby the end of the progression. i have never played a Kensai befor so i am not sure how well it would work. Also could a soulknife enter in to Kensai because it looks like it but i am not sure?

[AslanCross]

i just looked at Kensai and you should have a nice weaponby the end of the progression. i have never played a Kensai befor so i am not sure how well it would work. Also could a soulknife enter in to Kensai because it looks like it but i am not sure?

I'm pretty sure you can.

[Talya]

I've liked the flavor of stacking eternal blade and champion of corellon larethian, but in practice you couldn't get to better abilities of either class. In a gestalt game, It'd be more practical...

[Diamondeye]

Mo9 is perfectly feasible to get into without unarmed swordsage. The earliest you can get into it regardless is level 8, since you need to be at least level 7 to have skills with 10 ranks, which is one of the requirements.

If you're a human, you can do it with either swordsage or warblade by level 10; you need 5 feats for the PrC, and if you're a warblade, 6 feats since you'll need to martial study a non-warblade maneuver.

The most effective way I found, though, is to be a human and go 2 swordsage/5 warblade. In this way you have your 3 generic feats, 1 for being human and one for being a warblade, which can be either blind-fight or improved initiative.

If you want to be a nonhuman, it's going to be a pain since you need to keep your base class levels within 1 of each other, although if you're a dwarf taking 2 levels of fighter can give you the feats you need in time to make it by 7 with no multiclassing penalties.

The best way, again, that I found was to go 4 swordsage/5 warblade. You'll have all the feats you need at level 9. Also, you'll have lots of maneuvers from lots of disciplines, so getting 6 different ones shouldn't be too hard this way.

[dyslexicfaser]

Alternately, and this might be of interest to the OP, heavy shield throwing. Throw a shield at a bunch of monsters, have it bounce off of all of them in order, and then bounce back to your arm afterwards, ready to block any counterattack. Sound like anyone you can think of?

"When Captain America throws his mighty shield, all those who chose to oppose his shield must yield!"

Must.. play.. Captain America.

Great idea.

Possibly with 6 levels of Dungeoncrasher fighter and Jotunbrud/Knockback feats, so every throw of the shield sends people flying.

[Nebo_]

But won't it stop the maneuver and stance progression?

Yes, but it advances your initiator level, so when you go back into the base class, you have access higher level manuevers.

[Chronos]

So, what would the Captain's base class be? The fluff for Crusader fits him to a tee, but that would mean that he'd have to waste a couple of feats on an Iron Heart maneuver and stance.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

To be honest, the best prestige class for a TOB class is... more of that TOB class.

Seriously, all three of them have perfectly viable class abilities which progess naturally as the class progresses. None of them are particularly 'front loaded', except maybe the Crusader, and all of them have a lot of fun to the end just in one class.

PrC's for the ToB classes are more along the lines of what I always thought a PrC should have been... a way to specialize in a given topic and gain new abilities at the expense of not advancing your old abilities.

Take, for example, Bloodstorm Blade. Power-wise, you'd be better off going straight Warblade. However, if you want to make a character who can throw his weapon that isn't designed for throwing, it's perfect!

And, purely as an aside, I think Warblade fits Captain America perfectly. Think about it, he's one of the few truely intelligent superheros, and look at all the Int synergies Warblades get. Plus, he's never been a very religious individual, although an extremely dedicated one.

[Chronos]

Plus, he's never been a very religious individual, although an extremely dedicated one.

Crusaders don't necessarily need to be religious, though many of them are. They just have to have an overwhelming devotion to a particular cause. And Captain America is, indeed, overwhelmingly devoted to protecting the American way.

[playswithfire]

Warblade + Bloodstorm Blade + Master Thrower can be fun

[brian c]

Ruby Knight Vindicator is the only divine-themed ToB PrC, and absolutely requires cleric levels. If that's what you're aiming for, it's damn good. (other than the "Wee Jas" requirement. What's with the super-specific fluff here for generic PrCs?).

You know, the sample RKV in the book doesn't even worship Wee Jas, his deity is listed as St Cuthbert. So if you show that to your DM, you might be able to get an exception.