u/Chain_Belt

This is mostly a rant, but I'm honestly curious about this.

Now I'm a shameless min-maxer myself, but I'm getting sick of the whole "MaRtIaLs BaD, cAsTeRs GoOd," mentality where if you're not playing a hyper-optimized tier one or two character, you're being rude to the table. I get it, martials have little (pretty much nothing really) to contribute outside of combat, but isn't that the point of the adventure, to figure out a solution? Only half of D&D is a chess game against the DM. The other half is an interactive storytelling experience. Like, what would you be more interested in seeing: almost 12hrs of the epic journey that is The Lord of the Rings; or the less than 12minute affair of Gandalf using Legend Lore to identify the ring right away, mind blanking himself to avoid corruption, casting Teleport, dropping the ring into the volcano, and teleporting back before Bilbo's party even ends?

It might just be the circles I roll in, so I want to know what percentage of your games are optimize-or-die games vs more casual adventures (Think Dungeons and Daddies podcast where Beth played a rogue and warlock and and you could count on one hand how much she used sneak attack and eldritch blast combined in 2 seasons)?

Edit: By "chess game against the DM", all I meant is the tactics game with pieces on a board (or in the theatre of the mind of that's how you play). I'm assuming it's balanced by the DM and that said DM is not trying to tpk you but at least trying to rough you up to have you spend resources and whatnot. If the DM isn't also having fun with all their monsters' and NPCs' abilities, then why are we even playing?

The classes' "stances known" sections say Warblades specifically have to take Warblade stances, and Crusaders have to take Devoted Spirit, Stone Dragon, or White Raven stances. Swordsages however get to choose "from any discipline open to you."

Does that mean Swordsages can pick stances from ANY discipline provided they have the prerequisite maneuvers from Martial Study or Master of Nine prc?

Example:

Swordsage 13/Master of Nine 5. On becoming Swordsage 14, are they limited to Swordsage Stances or can they pick from ANY they have prerequisites for since Master of Nine made ALL disciplines open to you?

Edit:

Sorry, about the confusion. I fully understand how PRCs work when you take a new level of the PRC. The question was about taking a level of Swordsage AFTER the PRC and how the wording of the Swordsage entry not specifying that you can only pick stances from Swordsage disciplines but rather from any that are "open" to you.

This is noticeably different from the Warblade which unambiguously says you can only pick stances from Warblade disciplines and the crusader which lists out all the disciplines which you can choose. It's also different from casters that specifically state that the spells they cast come from the [class] spell list.

So upon gaining Swordsage 14, can I BASED ON THE WORDING choose a Devoted Spirit stance if I already have 5 Devoted Spirit maneuvers in my list thanks to the previous PRC levels?

NOTE: stances only count as maneuvers for the purpose of prerequisites, otherwise they're their own thing. That's why Warblade and crusader restate the discipline limitations in both sections.