Post/Author/DateTime	Post
EvilVegan 05-19-07, 04:19 PM	With adaptive style you can ready a bunch of stuff as a full-round. If I'm a sword sage, and it normally takes me a full-round to recover one maneuver, with this feat could I recover all my maneuvers with a full round action? Seems a bit skewed, but I Guess it isn't that powerful since a warblade can do it too for free (with less maneuvers). . .
Tempest Stormwind 05-19-07, 04:23 PM	With adaptive style you can ready a bunch of stuff as a full-round. If I'm a sword sage, and it normally takes me a full-round to recover one maneuver, with this feat could I recover all my maneuvers with a full round action? Seems a bit skewed, but I Guess it isn't that powerful since a warblade can do it too for free (with less maneuvers). . .Incorrect, on a technical level, but it CAN do something functionally equivalent. Adaptive Style doesn't recover a maneuver, it readies it. The distinction is subtle. If you use Adaptive Style and choose all your currently readied maneuvers as your newly readied maneuvers, yes, they're all "ready" and you just essentially "recovered" your maneuvers. HOWEVER, it does not trigger anything on that requires maneuver recovery (like the Vital Recovery feat). All that said, it's essentially changing the swordsage's awful recovery system into something far better. Adaptive Style is a feat every swordsage should take as a result (similar to, but less required than, Natural Spell on a druid).
EvilVegan 05-19-07, 04:31 PM	K, thanks. Thats what I figured, but I hadn't gone further to consider it's interaction with recovery based feats (since I haven't read them in detail).
Tempest Stormwind 05-19-07, 04:56 PM	There's not many. In fact, except for Vital Recovery, I can't think of any. It's a subtle distinction that isn't exactly called upon in the rules already. A similar example is the difference between 'flat-footed' and 'denied Dexterity bonus to AC'. They seem identical at first... until you realize that certain attacks can only be used on truly flat-footed opponents, and flat-footed characters can't take immediate actions. Colloquially, you can use it to recover your maneuvers. (It's just not "true" recovery.)
Feroz 05-19-07, 10:58 PM	There's not many. In fact, except for Vital Recovery, I can't think of any. It's a subtle distinction that isn't exactly called upon in the rules already. A similar example is the difference between 'flat-footed' and 'denied Dexterity bonus to AC'. They seem identical at first... until you realize that certain attacks can only be used on truly flat-footed opponents, and flat-footed characters can't take immediate actions. Colloquially, you can use it to recover your maneuvers. (It's just not "true" recovery.) And a swordsage can still use that ebil hand of death manuver on those creatures with uncanny dodge. Sure they get their dex bonus to AC, but they're still flat-footed!
DemonMonkeyBoy 05-20-07, 01:15 AM	Can someone explain that again, cause thais not what my book says. That or I'm not understanding what you meant. You can't use it to recover expended maneuvers. The feat only allow you to change the ones you have readied. If you have 6 maneuvers and you use 3 you can only change 3. You could change them to the ones you used but you still only have three left. Is this what you meant?
Tempest Stormwind 05-20-07, 01:34 AM	Can someone explain that again, cause thais not what my book says. That or I'm not understanding what you meant. You can't use it to recover expended maneuvers. The feat only allow you to change the ones you have readied. If you have 6 maneuvers and you use 3 you can only change 3. You could change them to the ones you used but you still only have three left. Is this what you meant? If you have 6 maneuvers known and 4 maneuvers readied, when you use Adaptive Style, you choose another set of 4 maneuvers known to ready. It doesn't matter how many of them you've actually used. If you choose the same set you already have, you essentially recover all of your maneuvers (except it doesn't actually count as recovery, it counts as readying maneuvers, just like you do with five minutes between combat). Really, it lets you do the 5-minutes-to-change-readied-maneuvers thing as a full-round action. That's really all it does. Since that doesn't count as recovering maneuvers, neither does this. However, that ONLY really matters on a few places, like Vital Recovery.
Neutronium_Dragon 05-20-07, 01:46 AM	Essentially, maneuvers are either "unreadied", "readied", or "expended". There's no "readied but expended" state. If you ready them, they're no longer expended. (Crusaders also have the "granted" state to contend with, but it doesn't change the results of Adaptive Style.)
Donovan Morningfire 05-20-07, 09:53 AM	While Adaptive Style is almost critical for a swordsage, my Warblade PC has found it quite useful as well. While Warblades can recover their maneuvers much faster (swift + attack vs. full-round do nothing), it's still nice to be able to change your readied maneuvers based on what you're fighting, be it a horde of mooks or a single BBEG.
Iarmeister 05-20-07, 12:19 PM	And a swordsage can still use that ebil hand of death manuver on those creatures with uncanny dodge. Sure they get their dex bonus to AC, but they're still flat-footed! Really?? I must have been interpreting the rules incorrectly regarding this maneuver then. I always thought that UD would protect vs. this maneuver.
Feroz 05-20-07, 02:26 PM	Really?? I must have been interpreting the rules incorrectly regarding this maneuver then. I always thought that UD would protect vs. this maneuver. Nope, Hand of Death requires you to hit a flat-footed target with it. Uncanny dodge doesn't prevent you from becoming flat footed, it prevents you from losing your Dex bonus to AC while flat footed. So you're still flat-footed, and hence affected by anything that implies, including Hand of Death, inability to make AoOs, etc, except for the loss of dex bonus to AC. Now Mark of the Stars, from Dragonmarked keeps you from being flat-footed entirely, which would prevent you from getting hit by Hand of Death, but otherwise, there are very few things that can keep you from being flat-footed.
Tempest Stormwind 05-20-07, 02:27 PM	Really?? I must have been interpreting the rules incorrectly regarding this maneuver then. I always thought that UD would protect vs. this maneuver. Nope. Uncanny Dodge just allows you to keep your Dexterity bonus to AC when flat-footed. It does NOT render you immune to being flat-footed. Like I said, subtle but significant distinction.