just a quick rules question

[bourdain89]

Playing a warblade in a campaign and I'm wondering about the uses of iron heart surge. All I'm is whether or not its possible to use iron heart surge to remove a charm effect

[Caedrus]

Playing a warblade in a campaign and I'm wondering about the uses of iron heart surge. All I'm is whether or not its possible to use iron heart surge to remove a charm effect

Save yourself a headache and just rewrite IHS to work how you think it should work. Because as written it does everything except what you think it does, like end winter or put out the sun.

[RandomCasualty2]

Save yourself a headache and just rewrite IHS to work how you think it should work. Because as written it does everything except what you think it does, like end winter or put out the sun.

Yeah, it actually doesn't end any real status conditions that you care about, since you still have to be able to act to use IHS (which means you need to be able to move), meaning the only real effect you can end that you might care about is blindness. Paralysis, domination, sleep, stunning.. all that crap prevents you from actually acting, so you can't use IHS to overcome it.

The best way to write it is to put it in as an immediate action or something that lets you negate specific status effects. And as a cost you lose the next standard action on your turn, or something like that.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Why can't it just be NOT AN ACTION and have no associated cost with it?

This is 3rd Edition; status effects are tossed out like candy. Further, there's already a bunch of bullshit spells and game effects out there already render you immune to a laundry list of stuff.

Why can't the fighter just have nice things for once?

[Roy]

Anything other than an Immediate action doesn't let you use it when it's not your turn?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Anything other than an Immediate action doesn't let you use it when it's not your turn?

Then you wouldn't be able to shake off the really bad juju anyway.

When I say 'Not an Action', I don't mean 3E's first definition of having it be stapled to anything (like using Power Attack). I mean, literally, there's no action required.

[Koumei]

I think it's awesome the way it is, just because you can stop time, gravity, the weather and so on. Yeah, and people thought Wizards had supreme cosmic power!

[Amra]

This maneuver is so badly written it makes us cry. For starters it should always have been a counter so that you could use it in place of a saving throw as per Moment of Perfect Mind. Try something like this:

IRON HEART SURGE

Iron Heart (Counter)
Level: Warblade 3
Prerequisite: One Iron Heart Maneuver
Initiation Action: None (see text)
Range: Personal

With a surge of indomitable will, you shrug off an effect that would have hampered your prowess.

You may use Iron Heart Surge upon making any saving throw. You learn the full effects of the result before choosing to initiate this maneuver. Upon initiating this maneuver, you are considered to have been completely unaffected by the event that provoked the saving throw, even if a successful saving throw would normally have resulted in a partial effect.

For instance, if a Warblade with this maneuver makes a saving throw against a disintegrate spell, he learns whether or not his saving throw was successful and how much damage would be inflicted before deciding whether to initiate Iron Heart Surge. He may choose to use this maneuver to negate the effects of the spell entirely, even if his saving throw would have succeeded.

You may also initiate Iron Heart Surge in order to avoid one or more of the following conditions from a single source, even if a saving throw would not normally be allowed:

Ability damaged, ability drained, blinded, confused, dazed, dazzled, deafened, energy drained, fascinated, fatigued (or exhausted), paralyzed, petrified, shaken (frightened, panicked), sickened (nauseated), or stunned.

You must choose to initiate Iron Heart Surge at the moment at which the condition(s) would be applied: you cannot, for instance, choose to suffer multiple attacks from a ghost's Draining Touch ability and later negate all of the ability damage inflicted.

If you are in the area of an ongoing spell or effect that causes one or more of the listed conditions, you may initiate Iron Heart Surge to avoid all of these conditions for the entirety of the effect's duration.

For example, a Warblade enters the area of a Kelgore's Grave Mist spell, and chooses to initiate Iron Heart Surge to avoid the fatigue effect (which does not normally allow a saving throw). He will not thereafter be affected by the fatigue inflicted by that casting of the spell, although he will take cold damage as normal whilst in the spell's area.

You may use Iron Heart Surge even when flat-footed or sleeping.

I'm at work, a bit rushed and going entirely from memory so I might have inadvertently left a gaping hole somewhere, but this is more-or-less how I've treated the maneuver in games I've run. I'm aware that, as written, the ability also negates the hit-point damage of an attack that simultaneously forces a saving throw or inflicts a status effect, but I for one am cool with that.

I also realise that it's no use against corner-case spells or effects like maze, which don't allow a saving throw but also don't inflict a standard status condition, and I'm happy with that too.

Thoughts?