So I made a gish class here.
And I liked some of the things about it, but the spell casting was complex and the spell list really long, and probably was too much like a standard wizards, stealing their thunder.
Tejón made his iron mage here and his warding/witching/school specialization were very cool.
So then I began thinking about the gish's niche and really, they are sort of backup casters. They should have decent spells and possibly even very dangerous ones, but their scope and breadth should be limited. Sorcerors are in this vein to some degree. They don't get to expand their repertoire as much as wizard but they choose spells from the whole list. Bards get a mishmash but mostly they have enchantments and illusions.
So what if a gish class got to pick 2 spell schools to cast from and gain bonus abilities from, almost like 2 domains. This limits them in scope. keeping them from out casting the caster. Each gish might then be very variable in what to expect. I could see trans/evoc being popular combo. Abjur/Nec would be awesome for a creepy hellknight. An illus/ench might be like a bard without music.
I still like 3/4 BAB, d8 HD, 4 skills/level, 6 spell levels. That seems inline with making them partial arcane casters. The school powers would also need to be balanced to help them retain some similar features, but the warding/witching seems good for giving them school appropriate melee skills.
is this a good idea? is there something I am missing?
I would have the schools Transmutation (Buffs) and Abjuration (Protection) topping out at 6th like the Bard. 3/4 BAB and 4 Skills/level. Give them one martial weapon for free and light/medium armor.
A theme and a mechanical niche. This is half a wizard and half a...something else, I'm not sure. It trods very heavily on the toes of a wizard, especially early on, when it has all of the utility spells and many of the save-or-die spells and battlefield control spells.
3/4 BAB and Improved Arcane Strike are redundant. Losing -5 to hit over 20 levels and gaining +5 to hit over 20 levels is exactly the same as 1/1 only you get your iteratives at weird times. This is needless complexity for near-zero gain.
What's with the high ref? And Evasion? How does that fit this class?
Weirbrand channeled casting is completely useless; it's worse than just casting a spell and hitting a dude on alternate turns. Casting a spell and holding it to release next turn just means that you can't Arcane Strike next turn, and gain zero benefit since you could have cast the spell normally on the first turn.
This class overloaded with swift actions that aren't in any practical sense actions. (Arcane Strike has this same problem but there's no sense repeating it).
This is essentially a heavily nerfed duskblade that gets almost all of the wizard utility spells, albeit slightly slowly.
Yeah, I am dispensing with the whole somatic actions mechanic. The Improved AS, I believe, actually means they get the to-hit of a full BAB, since it gets a +1 at every 5th level where a 3/4's BAB staggers. Its meant to work akin to how a monks Flurry bonus gives them an effective full BAB.
Much of that class' features will be replaced by using the 2 schools bonus abilities. Since somatic actions is out, then there needs to be a different "casting in armor" mechanic. About the only thing I want to keep are the spellmarks and the weapon bond (albeit with some different minutia).
edit- as for trodding on the wizards toes, yes it does. I don't think there is a way around that really. What I think the class needs to do then is be a guy who helps the wizard out by having some spells taken care of, and helps the frontline out by being a capable fighter. Just like if you have a bard in your party, the wizard doesn't need to be memorizing charm, etc. The problem IMHO with the multiclassed gishes is they have crap caster levels, low BAB's, and too much spell diversity that they don't need. So I think the solution is to limit the scope of the role as opposed to the effectiveness.
Maybe take a page from the Wizard's playbook: Give the gish the choice of 2 "specialty" schools and make all other schools opposed. They can still learn spells from those "forbidden" schools, but it would take 2 (TWO!) spell slots to cast a spell from the opposed school. That way, the gish can be versatile, but with a high cost.
A theme and a mechanical niche. This is half a wizard and half a...something else, I'm not sure. It trods very heavily on the toes of a wizard, especially early on, when it has all of the utility spells and many of the save-or-die spells and battlefield control spells.
3/4 BAB and Improved Arcane Strike are redundant. Losing -5 to hit over 20 levels and gaining +5 to hit over 20 levels is exactly the same as 1/1 only you get your iteratives at weird times. This is needless complexity for near-zero gain.
What's with the high ref? And Evasion? How does that fit this class?
Weirbrand channeled casting is completely useless; it's worse than just casting a spell and hitting a dude on alternate turns. Casting a spell and holding it to release next turn just means that you can't Arcane Strike next turn, and gain zero benefit since you could have cast the spell normally on the first turn.
This class overloaded with swift actions that aren't in any practical sense actions. (Arcane Strike has this same problem but there's no sense repeating it).
This is essentially a heavily nerfed duskblade that gets almost all of the wizard utility spells, albeit slightly slowly.
Everything has something that trods on the other, are you saying this is a better option than a wizard at low levels?
I am not sure that the Gish needs to have that much diversity, even at the higher cost of two spell slots. I think that choosing your schools should be hard choices, and to allow them to cast spells outside of those schools cheapens it a little. The wizard/sorceror gets to have that diversity (even the specialists) as part of their utility/problem solving shtick. The Gish, being stronger in melée, should not fill that role as well, IMHO.
Everything has something that trods on the other, are you saying this is a better option than a wizard at low levels?I'm saying that this trods on two roles' toes at low levels.
How, please support your statement, I am interested, please explain.
What MiB is getting at is that this proposition is largely equivalent to a wizard at levels one and two, and flat-out superior to a sorcerer through level 5... all while being viable melee support. "Two schools" isn't a particularly meaningful restriction, when it comes down to it. The bard has a completely separate spell list, which is significantly more restrictive; they don't get the full Wizard list in any school, it's all cherry-picked and cautiously thematic. That's why they can get away with their 6-level progression. Without such a carefully designed spell list, there is no way to prevent massive toe-stepping.
As I commented somewhere on one of the dozen other threads on this topic, I expected this to be the case even with a 4-level progression. It actually works better than I expected, which is why I wrote up the Iron Mage as I did... but that's a lucky coincidence of the contents of those first four spell levels, and the levels at which a half-caster receives them. Even going to level 5 spells, whether on the Duskblade progression or something else, it would have been broken one way or another. There wasn't a damn thing I thought it would be fair to drop a level so the Iron Mage could access it. Arcane spells are just that good.
What MiB is getting at is that this proposition is largely equivalent to a wizard at levels one and two, and flat-out superior to a sorcerer through level 5... all while being viable melee support. "Two schools" isn't a particularly meaningful restriction, when it comes down to it. The bard has a completely separate spell list, which is significantly more restrictive; they don't get the full Wizard list in any school, it's all cherry-picked and cautiously thematic. That's why they can get away with their 6-level progression. Without such a carefully designed spell list, there is no way to prevent massive toe-stepping.
As I commented somewhere on one of the dozen other threads on this topic, I expected this to be the case even with a 4-level progression. It actually works better than I expected, which is why I wrote up the Iron Mage as I did... but that's a lucky coincidence of the contents of those first four spell levels, and the levels at which a half-caster receives them. Even going to level 5 spells, whether on the Duskblade progression or something else, it would have been broken one way or another. There wasn't a damn thing I thought it would be fair to drop a level so the Iron Mage could access it. Arcane spells are just that good.
Or the answer could be to create a spell list for each spell school that trods less on their toes, perhaps with some custom spells, a la the bard's method. That's a lot of work though, and I think I'd like to see this class play a little, first. When it's done, that is.