BackgroundThe DM is leery about letting characters- even martial adepts- get maneuver-granting items. We're a party of a human Druid8, a gray elf Conjurer5/Swordsage1/Incantatrix2, a human Cleric4/Crusader1/Ruby Knight Vindicator3, and a human Artificer7/Effigy Master1.
At level 5, we got so many AC boosters that the DM instituted an AC cap of 4x one's HD. (This also prevents me from having an AC of 45ish at this level with all m' buffs.)
He probably knee-jerked at the notion of people reliably passing saves or teleporting once per minute.
My ArgumentPaying 3K to buy an item to grant Shadow Jaunt/Mind Over Body/Distracting Ember (or less if the DM's Artificer crafts it) seems reasonable in a level 8 party. We're at the level where the rules state even non-martial adepts can use these. Such items have significant limits on their use, and there are other factors that limit these items.
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Effect: Even a level 1 spell can end a fight.
Color spray,
grease, and
sleep were far more potent at level 1 than they are now at level 8 but they may still have minor use. Likewise, a level 1 maneuver usually does a bit of damage with a slight side effect. Once per minute, doing +d6 fire damage with Burning Blade or summoning a flanking buddy for 1 round with Distracting Ember or nearly auto-passing a Will save with Moment of Perfect Mind or healing a friend for d6+4 damage if I hit with Crusader's Strike are fun, minor abilities. These maneuvers add flair to melee, allowing all characters to do more in melee than charge or full attack.
At level 9, a pure martial adept gets level 5 maneuvers. He gets an extra attack per round with Dancing Mongoose. With Shadow Stride, he can teleport 50' as a move action. He can prevent one foe from acting for 1 round with Disrupting Blow if it fails a save. With Flanking Maneuver, he can grant allies a free attack against a foe he flanks. With Heroic Surge, he could use all 4 of these maneuvers in 1 turn!
Meanwhile, at level 9, a pure Wizard can use
lesser planar binding to capture outsiders and elementals to do his bidding. (These creatures can have class levels, including martial adept levels.) He can
teleport across worlds as a standard action. He can use
contact other plane to gain so much information that deities put him on his no-call list. Being able to reliably pass a Reflex save once per minute with Action Before Thought, a level 2 maneuver, is small potatoes.
Compare this to a full martial adept20. His crowning achivements- level 9 maneuvers- include Strike of Righteous Vitality to reproduce
heal (normally a level 6 Cleric spell), Time Stands Still to grant him 2 consecutive full attacks in a round, and Inferno Blast that does 100 fire damage in a 60' radius, (Reflex 19+WIS mod half), or less if the target resists fire. These maneuvers also have prerequisites, making a character unlikely to have all three by level 20.
In contrast, a level 20 Wizard could take over the Prime Material with a legion of troops gained from
planar binding,
animate dead,
create dead,
gate,
simulacrum, and good o' Diplomacy. He could use
genesis to make a private demiplane. He could tour the multiverse on a whim with
plane shift. He could make a stronghold impossible to penetrate, short of divine intervention. The only prereq to having these spells is a high enough Wizard level. Even without spending a gold on spells, he could know all these spells and many more by his class level alone.
A caster alters reality. A martial character hits things.
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Prerequisites: The user of an item still must meet its prereqs. In general, that means we can only use a level 1 or 2 maneuver at level 8, and we may need 1 more maneuver to qualify for even these.
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Cost: A slotted maneuver-granting item (maneuver level 1, 2, or 3) has a market value of 3000 gold. For that much, I could buy a Warbeast
Legendary Tiger and have 875 gold to spare! (Mind you, a Legendary Tiger is cool, but probably inappropriate for us at this level. A default one has over 300 HP! If I got the Warbeast Legendary Tiger with the highest HD for 3000 gold, it would have over 500 HP!)
A maneuver-granter of level 6 or below costs 15K, and maneuvers of this level usually have 2 prerequisites.
A maneuver-granter of level 9 or below costs 45K, and maneuvers of this level usually have 3 to 5 prerequisites.
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Access: Martial adepts like our Ruby Knight Vindicator get access to their maneuvers sooner than any others, and knowledge of these maneuvers won't disappear in an
antimagic field. A Wizard18- one able to
time stop,
gate, and reshape reality to his whim with level 9 spells- can only use up to level 5 maneuvers IF he meets all other prereqs, usually another maneuver or two in the same discipline.
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Heroics: The level 2 Wizard spell
heroics (
Spell Compendium 113) already grants a Fighter bonus feat for 10 minutes per level, including Martial Stance or Martial Study for an extra stance or maneuver. Having an item to continuously grant a maneuver makes a character more predictable and usually easier to DM.
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Spell Points: Casters are getting a massive ramp up in stamina with your spell point system. At level 8, adding half my 24 INT at every level gives me 96 castable spell levels per day from INT alone compared to the meager 21 spell levels I get from spell slots. That's 29 level 4 spells per day with some power left over. I'd have to try to run out at that rate. Each of these spells has the potential to end a fight. See
Evard's black tentacles,
glitterdust,
stinking cloud, and
grease.
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Visibility: We use maneuver and stance cards, making it easy for someone to see which of our maneuvers are ready to use and their effects are printed on the cards. Our spells are in a binder, requiring more digging.
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Cooldown Time: Each maneuver is usable once per minute by non-martial adepts, which is usually once per fight for anyone. Only martial adepts can refresh maneuvers, and doing so requires an action for a Swordsage or Warblade, or drawing the right card for a Crusader. (
Time of Battle 40 lists maneuver recovery rules.)
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Attunement: Each item requires 24 hours to attune. If we're in a hurry, I can't slip it on and start using it.
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It Works In Reverse: If we can use these maneuvers, so can your NPCs.
Also, a pure martial adept (or even creatures without class levels) can obtain an item to duplicate spell effects from
cure light wounds,
entangle, and
shield all the way up to
mass heal,
gate and
time stop. Why not allow maneuvers on items?