This is a Feat idea that would be a pretty decent bandaid fix to what many of us see as a shortfall in the d20 system as a whole as it pertains to the mechanical enmeshing of both arcane and martial power in a cohesive character concept.
As we have discovered on these boards the past few days there are about as many opinions as to how a Fighter/Mage multiclass character should be built, what should be his focus and modus operandi. A number uf us, off the top of my head Benn Brue, A Man In Black and myself seem to have the concept pegged in the fashion of someone who *ahem* "stabs dudes magically". In other words uses magic in melee combat, if not spells themselves, to augment their damage and combat potential.
The problem, as I see it, is this. A warrior, or full base attack bonus character, gains more attacks per round as his BAB increases but he requires outside dynamics (power attack and other feats, ever purse-draining reliance on better and bigger weapons, other magical augmentations) for his damage to scale. A caster, from level 1-20 can only cast one spell per round, there is no "full casting action" allowing a 20th level wizard to cast spells at progressively lower caster level but their spells ostensibly scale in damage and utility.
A Ftr 6/Wiz 5/EK 3 can either make 3 attacks or a single spell, whether they are sitting in the back casting or in the thick of the fight.
The solution is a feat like this, which will as many of us see it let us cast and fight at the same time.
Improved Arcane Strike
Prerequisites: Base Attack Bonus +6, Arcane Caster level 3+, Arcane Strike
Benefit: As a swift action you may sacrifice an attack (usually one at your lowest attack bonus) to cast a spell in combat, channeling it into your melee strike. You may only cast a spell in this manner which has a range of Touch. This spell provokes attacks of opportunity as normal. If successfully cast the target of your your next successful attack is affected by that spell as if you had touched him.
Maybe I haven't worded it perfectly, but you get the idea. Alternately make something more akin to the CW arcane strike where you give up a spell slot but do extra dice of damage, only make it an elemental typed damage.
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Something like this would go a long way toward building the "stabbing dudes magically" synergy we've been asking for. We would need a more realistic feat to deal with arcane spell failure too, though, since currently all that's available steals your swift action every single turn (making it incompatible with this feat, and/or any attempts to quick cast).
Maybe a feat that did away with spell failure as long as you were only wearing light armour (or light and medium) but had a prerequisites that made the feat inaccessible to primary casters, like a crazy high Strength score, or a ratio of class level to base attack bonus, or hell, maybe, even just levels in fighter?
I don't know. Making this concept too reliant on feats, however, doesn't do much to fix the problem of it still being wholly unworkable at low-levels.
Something like this would go a long way toward building the "stabbing dudes magically" synergy we've been asking for. We would need a more realistic feat to deal with arcane spell failure too, though, since currently all that's available steals your swift action every single turn (making it incompatible with this feat, and/or any attempts to quick cast).
Maybe a feat that did away with spell failure as long as you were only wearing light armour (or light and medium) but had a prerequisites that made the feat inaccessible to primary casters, like a crazy high Strength score, or a ratio of class level to base attack bonus, or hell, maybe, even just levels in fighter?
I don't know. Making this concept too reliant on feats, however, doesn't do much to fix the problem of it still being wholly unworkable at low-levels.
True, but it does make the tipping point at which you can stab things magically go from 17 (capstone of EK) to 7, which would IMO be a reasonable point in a class progression to introduce an erstwhile class-defining mechanic. I do think this is a relatively elegant solution whereby you give up an iterative attack and a swift action to get a spell cast. A character with that choice would honestly have a hard time of it in some situations.
I honestly hadn't thought of the ASF thing, you're right that's another problem. Perhaps just making Armored Mage from the bard class into a feat, along with Improved and Greater varieties.
Personally I don't find a problem with making the solutions feats, as long as it doesn't require a long chain to achieve the synergy we both seek.
But yeah I'm open to all comments, this was more a suggestion for a solution for what I felt was the crux of our problem and desire for a separate core class. EITHER casting OR fighting seems to all or nothing a proposal. The EK capstone is one solution, and a very effective one if perhaps not a predictable one (relies on weapon crit) but 17th level is too long delayed gratification IMO for what I feel is a perfectly good, iconic concept.