I was making a Whisper Gnome Swift Hunter recently who has a 1 level dip into both Warblade and Swordsage. I naturally consulted your port of Carnivore's "ToB and ranged weapons" guide. Incidentally I think I might've found a glaring oversight:
Counter Charge (SS1) isn't listed among the useful maneuvers. Now I understand it has a listed range of "Melee Attack". However, at no point is it actually described as using a melee attack. You don't make an attack roll. You make an opposed Str or Dex check, and that's it. The flavour text is even more clear as to the action you're taking -- "With a quick sidestep..."
In fact, due to the nature of the maneuver only being useful when an opponent charges, and they're very likely to have a greater reach than you, I can't imagine that it's meant to be limited to your melee attack range but rather your opponent's. Otherwise this maneuver is entirely useless. This would be truly foolish, given that there is considerable text and weight given to what happens if you are larger or smaller than your opponent.
Thus the logical interpretation seems to be that this maneuver is green-lighted to use once an opponent charges and is within his melee range. You then choose one ability and an opposed roll is made, with appropriate modifiers applied. In short, it appears the authors were trying to give small, Dex-heavy types another shot at surviving Berserkergeddon.
So given these thoughts, is Counter Charge not a useful maneuver for my Dex heavy, small sized Gnome? What am I missing?
