My eighth level character going ninth level is starting at first level war blade. He would get one stance and 3 maneuvers at up to 3rd level. Could I take absolute steel stance and iron heart surge both having prerequisites one iron heart maneuver at the beginning of this level? In other words, can a stance and a maneuver at the beginning of the class level be each other's prerequisites?
[RPG] Maneuver and stance prerequisites
dnd-3.5etome-of-battle
Related Solutions
Yes, you can take higher-level Stances at your first class level
There are several issues here.
First of all, this line is in the form of a descriptive statement, not a prescriptive one: it describes the usual case of things, rather than defining a limitation on your options. I would argue that it is there solely to help players new to the book, who are creating their first martial adept from level 1.
After all, a great many statements are made in Wizards’ products that assume you are single-classed, and starting from ECL 1 is the default assumption for the game. The Wizard’s Specialization feature says you cannot cast spells from your banned schools – but you actually can, you just need to get that ability from another class.
In addition, the line does not say “first-level martial adepts are restricted to 1st-level Stances.” It says that they “begin play” with a single 1st-level maneuver. A multiclass character taking his first level in a martial adept class after ECL 1 is not “begin[ning] play,” so the statement does not apply to him.
For that matter, taken literally, that would imply that any martial adept has only a single 1st-level Stance when the game starts – even if he started at level 20 and took Martial Stance feats repeatedly. Clearly, this is not the case, which is only further evidence that the line is not a rule, but a hint or (supposedly) helpful description.
Finally, if you rule that it does prevent higher-level Stances from being taken for your first class level, it flies in the face of the entire Tome of Battle design pattern. Tome of Battle was intentionally designed to mesh well with previous books and existing characters – that is why the Initiator Level rules were written the way they were in the first place.
Every single other method of learning any maneuvers – Stances included – allows those with higher Initiator Level to “skip” lower-level maneuvers – because Wizards finally understood how important it was to the system that characters be getting level appropriate class features, even if they multiclass. For instance, a 12th-level character, with no martial adept levels, still has an Initiator Level of 6, and can take Martial Study or Martial Stance to get a 3rd-level maneuver or stance, respectively.
This single supposed exception does not make any sense in light of the context that Tome of Battle provides, does not have the form of a prescriptive rule, and does not actually specify your first martial adept level but rather whether or not the character is “beginning play,” which really does not make much sense if taken literally.
[RPG] Do Swashbuckler’s Insightful Strike, Swordsage’s Insightful Strike and Shadow Blade feat stack
That is correct. None of the bonuses are typed, and they come from different sources, so they stack.
Ultimately, this is a very costly exercise: you have to improve four different ability scores, you need three levels of swashbuckler and four of swordsage, and a feat that locks you in to a Shadow Hand stance. And even then, it only works when you use strikes of the appropriate discipline, which means most of the time you’re not full-attacking and applying those damage bonuses multiple times. The levels of swordsage, of course, are quite good, and Shadow Hand stances are pretty solid, so that’s not all bad, but you’re still talking about a lot of effort. And the multiple ability dependency you’ve inflicted on yourself is quite burdensome.
In contrast, it’s possible to add Charisma to damage 2-4 times. Strength is added 1.5 times with no investment at all just from using a weapon in two hands, and there are ways to add it again. Power Attack doesn’t rely on ability scores at all, and can add twice one’s level to damage. Any of these is likely to result in much higher amounts of damage than are four separate ability scores being added to damage. And they have fewer restrictions, so for example they can just be used on a full-attack and applied to each of your iterative attacks instead of just once.
So, basically, this is a way to pump damage, but it’s fairly inefficient. Much better alternatives exist. Which says something about 3.5, no question, but ultimately the game pretty much is rocket tag.
Best Answer
Tome of Battle pg. 44, under Prerequisite:
So you cannot choose iron heart surge unless you already know an Iron Heart maneuver, nor can you choose absolute steel stance without knowing an Iron Heart maneuver first. Since you cannot choose either, one cannot be used to meet the prerequisite of the other—you need to actually have one first before you can meet the prerequisite of either, which you can’t do.
However, you can choose one or both of these maneuvers if you also choose another Iron Heart maneuver at 1st level. For example, you could choose steel wind as one of your three maneuvers known at 1st, and then you would be able to choose iron heart surge as one of your other maneuvers and absolute steel stance as your stance.
Furthermore, if you get to warblade 4th and get to swap a maneuver known for some other maneuver, you could choose in that case to swap steel wind for something not from Iron Heart—or for another Iron Heart maneuver that had requirements. Since at that point you already have both iron heart surge and absolute steel stance, even if you lose steel wind you still meet the prerequisite of one Iron Heart maneuver for each of them—in fact, you actually have two Iron Heart maneuvers. So you could swap steel wind for mithral tornado, which requires two Iron Heart maneuvers, and end up with iron heart surge, mithral tornado, and absolute steel stance all functioning. The replacement mechanic can also wind up with you in other kinds of otherwise-impossible situations, such as having iron heart surge as your only Iron Heart maneuver—you would have had to have some other Iron Heart maneuver at some point, but you could trade that away and iron heart surge can meet its own prerequisite.