Can a warblade use maneuvers on thrown weapons?

Question

Most strike maneuvers require a melee attack. Thrown weapons aren’t really melee attacks. Warblades get proficiency with thrown weapons.

Can warblades use strike maneuvers with thrown weapons?

Answer 1

If you throw a weapon, you are making a ranged attack.

If you are making a ranged attack, you are not making a melee attack.

If a strike specifies a melee attack, you do not meet the requirement.

Thrown weapons can often be used for melee attacks—those work just fine with any kind of strike.

Stikes sometimes don’t specify a melee attack, but allow any sort of attack—those work just fine with throwing a weapon.

But if a strike allows you to make a melee attack, you cannot throw a weapon.

Where you have to be careful is when things refer to “melee weapons,” which a thrown weapon is. If something said “an attack with a melee weapon,” then throwing that weapon still counts as such an attack. Tome of Battle does not use this wording for any strikes, to my knowledge.

Answer 2

Normally no - melee attack means melee attack.

Most Strike maneuvers have a Range entry of "Melee attack."

Per Tome of Battle, p. 45, this means:

This maneuver affects any creature you make a successful melee attack against.

That means just what it says - you have to make a melee attack to use the maneuver. There's no wiggle room here for arguing that throwing a weapon that can also be used in melee is technically attacking with a melee weapon, or anything like that - the text cares about the attack, not the weapon.

There are a few Strikes that don't specify melee attack, such as Adamantine Bones (ToB, p. 81). These work fine with thrown weapons. Unfortunately for an aspiring thrown weapon initiator, they're all very high level.

Bloodstorm Blade loosens this restriction.

If you want to use other strikes with ranged attacks, you're in luck: there's a prestige class right in ToB that's designed for doing exactly that!

The Bloodstorm Blade (ToB, p. 100) gets the "Martial Throw" feature, which provides the following benefit:

...you can initiate a strike from the Iron Heart discipline with a thrown weapon.

The class also provides various other benefits that enable this "thrown weapon initiator" playstyle, such as making your weapons always return to your hand to allow full attack actions. If you want to make a character that mixes maneuvers and thrown weapons, Bloodstorm Blade is tailor-made for your needs.

Many manuvers that aren't Strikes are compatible with ranged attacks.

Alternatively, if you don't want to be a Bloodstorm Blade, you can still take advantage of lots of ToB content - just not most Strikes. There are lots of Stances, Boosts, and Counters that work perfectly well with ranged attacks.

This old thread from the minmaxforum catalogues the maneuvers that are compatible with archery, and includes a Warblade-based archer build to showcase them. Many of the same ideas will work with thrown weapons, so it might be worth mining for ideas.