And Phaedrus, it's not necessarily stupid. Just because casters, widely understood to be the most overpowered entities in the 3.5 universe, don't have a similar prereq is not an argument against the prereq for initiators ...
Yes it is, if you allow said casters to exist in the same game. And dropping these prepreqs doesn't actually noticeably add to the power of martial adepts, anyway. So this is a non-argument.
I could just as easily argue that not having similar restrictions on the casters is stupid. The only reason casters have the benefit of the doubt is that they were there first, and are way more powerful even WITH that sort of restriction ...
The additional complexity is a decent argument, though that's going to vary from person to person (I don't mind the complexity, personally)
Adding unnecessary complexity is stupid in any system, gaming or otherwise. Ever heard of Ockam's Razor? Now I realize that this is a game, and some people like fiddling with things to crank the most out of it, and so do I to an extent. But having to just jump through a bunch of completely meaningless hoops just to reach what should be a straight-forward goal (build a character with maneuver X) is not my idea of fun...
You're using Occam's Razor backwards, but I think I get your point ...
And I don't really agree that they're meaningless. Perhaps from a power standpoint, but that's not necessarily the only reason for them being there. I can't ask the devs, obviously, but as has been noted already, it could be that they wanted to force a certain focus on initiators. Of course, they weren't that consistent about it (*cough*stonedragon*cough*), but it's possible.
And it's not like you can't build initiators with access to a wide range of maneuvers anyway. I pulled off an SS/Mo9 with high level access to all 9 disciplines, and there was a build in the ToB for Dummies (I think) that did the whole "true master of 9" thing to get the 9th level maneuver in all 9 disciplines.
Yes, and it took you how long? Do you want to do that for an NPC that's going to live for exactly 1 encounter? I don't.
I don't recall exactly how long it took me to build that character (it started at level 19), but it wasn't that long. Certainly no longer than picking spells for a caster. I don't remember feeling like it was getting annoying, but that will of course be a personal thing. And you're absolutely right about making NPCs. But then, that's really not much different than making a caster NPC. Yeah, the initiator would have the prereqs, but generally has way fewer maneuvers than a caster has spells, too.
I always figured the intention of the prerequisites was to create more differences between members of the same class, like disciplines for psions, domains for clerics, mantles for ardents, and specialization for wizards.
If all choices for a maneuver of level X were equally useful, then that should happen naturally anyway. They should have focused on that, rather than adding something stupid to shoehorn people into picking useless crap.
Eh, if the CO boards are any indication, people would still cherry pick to their hearts content ...
Though it would of course be better if all the maneuvers were similarly useful at a given level. And if the prereqs were more consistent (or nonexistent).
Honestly, I should probably just stop posting. I'm putting out a lot of words in defense of something that I honestly don't care THAT much about ...
Apparently my brain decided this was a good post to debate about or something. I guess I'm just surprised that so many people hate them so badly They seem (to me, anyway) like a minor inconvenience at worst.