Norabel's page

If you for some reason make something like a bard/wizard, you probably need all the help you can get.

It tends to start with something as awful as Bard / Wizard but when your players get the hang of it you will soon be facing a Wizard / Sorcerer / Ultimate Magus with epic rigs of wizardy and multiple magic item feats.

Trust me...always think ahead. :)

Depending on the setting, alignments, and so on, I'd probably allow it, but then face the character with these obstacles, and NOT GO EASY with them either:

REALLY great stuff there Ravenot!

Another thing to consider is reworking all the templates (ALL of them) down to LA 0. Just think about the gained abilities and what do you really want to keep, dumb the rest and hand out weaknesses to compensate. It's not that hard to come up with a lot of nice flavorful weaknesses against undead.

And while you at it...why not make more specific approach to the template system. Instead of just giving someone the old undead - treatment make customized a Vampire or a Ghoul template. I never really found much logic to just having a single construct template for instance since you can actually have a huge array of variable creatures with different attributes. (not all constructs are mindless, some have clockwork or biological parts etc.)

I disagree that they should have no positive energy healing at all, nor should they just be completely immune to the pos/neg energies.

For one- You are then depending on the DM to include such items in the campaign. I'd rather not tack that on to an already risky position. (i.e. asking for the template at the first place).

For two- I'd rather not require an arcane caster to burn either spells known or spells per day just to keep me going. With intelligent play you can do a pretty good job of avoiding damage but requiring someone else to take care of you from their precious resources seems to me to be abit much.

At least with 1/2 healing you Can get healed if need be. (if not ideally).

-S

I have a player running around with a construct character that is immune to both positive and negative energy. She can only gain HP from arcane "repair X damage" - spells and the application of craft skill. My thoughts so far as a GM is that it's balanced.

Easy Mirror Mirror, I'm not calling them a poor class. They have their purpose and are an interesting class to play, but so many people try to play Warmages in place of a wizard, or worse, try to use a Wizard as one would a Warmage, and none of that is ideal.

I'm not sure how you were outdamaging a two-weapon fighting rogue, unless they weren't able to get off their sneak attack, but that isn't a huge issue to this discussion.

All I was trying to do, was defend MDT's Martial Warmage variant as not overpowered. Which indeed it's not.

I never said they were overpowered. Getting anything but the worst possible BAB without losing even a single level of spell progression is pretty damn nice but the limits to this guys spell repertoire is balancing enough so it will never be game breaking. Getting to use better weapons and not sucking while doing it gives it so nice flavor I just don't have the heart to touch that. :) I'll leave it as it is so thank you OP!

I have GM a lot of warmages and they do really well at damage dealing. Versatility to me isn't always out damaging every other character in the party or doing better than the party wiz, druid or cleric but consistently doing well in most if not every situation. You can design encounters that are tailored to be hard against any other class except the warmage. Their spells just tend to deal really nice damage to anything without energy immunity(everything) or unbeatable spell resistance and we are not near as high level where I can justify those things.

An interesting combo would be Wizard/Warmage/Ultimate Magus now that we got the whole charisma thing out of our backs.

It's actually not NEARLY as bad as you make it out to be Norabel. Armor is, quite literally, the worst defense in the game. Wizards blow these guys out of the water without even really trying.

Warmages just don't have the versatility necessary to compete, although the Martial Option does fit the flavor and make Warmage a bit more playable.

Haven't play-tested this thing yet but I agree that it probably isn't all THAT bad. And as far as the campaign need goes we are talking more about NPC - class here so it might work. (until somebody wants to actually play one). I think going with bard spell progression and giving him wider spell options is going to end up even more powerful class.

Warmage is plenty versatile as far as a pure blaster goes. Knowing every spell on his list means there is always (mostly) a workaround to elemental resistances, good saves, good AC and less than optimal area of effect. Sure you can take elemental substitution and sculpt spell but warmage doesn't have to.

Ok, after reading through everything, here's the latest version of my warmage conversion. If you don't like it, that's fine. :)

I do. :) Changes from the first post are in blue, and I didn't list anything that didn't change from the first post.

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Let me see. Warmage with martial focus gets: 9th level spells, rogue BAB, heavy armor, primary casting stat to damage, bloodline class skills (with INT as primary stat) and arcana, martial weapon proficiency...you don't think that a bit much?

Don't get me wrong I like the idea a lot! I have this nation in my campaign setting that locks up children with arcane talent and throws them into a warmage colleges. (would-be sorcerers are born with red hair and green eyes so if your parents are less than diligent in dying your hair your are pretty much going into a "military school" for the rest of your life. They also get branded with a magical tattoo that doubles as a focus for locating spells.)

I think the warmage is just the kind of thing prestige classes are made for except you would have to get it at 1st level for it to work with my setting. Your martially focused version is ripe for stealing but I think I'll tone down the casting a bit. Maybe limit the available spells even more or just give him 6 levels to go with (with some utility spells that fit the theme).