The warmage was basically made to blast, and blast only. If you want a blaster with utility its better to play a sorcerer. I know that is not what you want to hear though. I just got an idea. Maybe you could try UMD'ing the spells that are not on the class list.
PS: I did not look over you spell list yet.
It is definitely more powerful than the printed Warmage (that was your plan yes?)
Adding versatility like teleport options might make it better than the Beguiler as well...
I would say it's not necessarily out of line power-wise with a Wizard though - probably about the same.
If approximately equal to the Beguiler was your aim, then I think you overdid it a bit. Remove the teleport options and it should be pretty close.
I was going for ON PAR with a specialist wizard. Warmage did need a better list as was frequently noted on the WOTC boards (especially the 'Warmages blow up goats for pocket change' thread)
I remember that thread. Got pretty nasty in there. I really enjoyed playing the few warmages I have, but I do agree that they need some more spells. I think the concept is great, but I feel that the game designers were scared to death of it being *too effective, so they nerfed the hell out of it right out of the gate. The variant in the PHB2 helped open up a good bit of versatility, but you could only select one new spell every couple levels.
It really does need a revision. I've had very successful multiclass warmages, mixing with fighter levels and such, but there's very little reason to play 1-20 as is. Maybe it doesn't need more spells, perhaps some bonus class feats to help with all the blasting, like getting Weapon Focus(range spell), or ways to manipulate area effects and make more rays or something(besides metamagic). The revisions above are a really good start though!
Honestly when i played a warmage, what i enjoyed was the simplicity. It became a running joke in a game that i was in.
DM: Your turn, what do you do? Wait let me guess, you hit it with rocks (Hail of stone)?
Me: Correct
If you turn the warmage into a battlefield controller it is not the same class. It certainly can be a 'War Mage' since battlefield control is a good thing in war, but if your intent was to not 'convert' the warmage, you have failed in that. This will be an extremely different class.
And while I agree MOST classes shouldnt be bumped, paizo bumped the core classes to match the general power creep of the WoTC splat books. I am pretty sure the warmage got left out of that one.
Personally I have done one of two things with the warmage. My simple 'conversion' was to give the warmage the evoker school powers. Edge became int+1/2 level, they got the force missile, and the elemental wall ability along with cantrips. That is what i recomend at other peoples tables if someone wants to play a warmage. At my table however I have a reimagining of the warmage that was inspired by something posted by smilodan a while back.
I just think that if you really dont want to 'convert' the warmage you shouldnt change the entire nature of the class, which you do by the changes to the spell list.
The role has changed a little, most spells still focus on blasting, but you can now control the field a bit. I was going for a warmage who could provide the odd tactical advantage. Been playing a session- level 12 with it and works alot better now. The teleport spells like benign transposition let you do something useful with those low level slots (because using a 1st level evocation at 12 is REALLY weak. A Party still strongly needs a utility caster though- the new warmage is nearly as useless out of combat as the old one (this was intended). Tip- if you use this spellist or the old one then sculpt spell is your best friend.
I am sure it works alot better, those are very useful spells, but is not the same class. As for first level spells, i have found hail of stone is useful all the way to high levels in given situations. No save no spell resistance, you just get hit with rocks, enjoy.
Dragon Magic (the book).
Dragon Touched = levals as a sorcerer. Then Draconic Heritage and dragon feats means you can get free spells from your draconic type AND access feats that let you heal or repulse or get temp HPs etc as you cast AND open up the potential (DM rule) to get spell like abilities of things not on your spell lists by swapping slots with dragons (forget what its called).
I believe those are Dragon Pacts. Dragon Touched are basic races with a little bit of dragon in them. Same book though. I've been looking those over, and that might be one, relatively simple way to open up a Warmage.
I was going for ON PAR with a specialist wizard. Warmage did need a better list as was frequently noted on the WOTC boards (especially the 'Warmages blow up goats for pocket change' thread).
(I think you added an extra "up" in the thread name...)
If you go back and read that thread, pay attention to the posts from user "solbergb". He makes the excellent point that if you compare the warmage to an archer rather than a wizard and use some of the feats in Complete Arcane, then the class works just fine in that capacity (as it was intended to). He even provides examples from his experience in Living Greyhawk.
Has anyone here thought of making an Eldritch Knight using Warmage as the Arcane component? Lower levels would suck, but once you qualify for the PrC you'd be getting full BAB and only slightly staggered spellcasting...
I haven't tried it yet so I can't say how it would turn out, but sounds tasty...
Has anyone here thought of making an Eldritch Knight using Warmage as the Arcane component? Lower levels would suck, but once you qualify for the PrC you'd be getting full BAB and only slightly staggered spellcasting...
I haven't tried it yet so I can't say how it would turn out, but sounds tasty...
There is very little synergy between the warmage's spell list and using weapons.
The Revised Warmage spellist:
I'd have to dig when I get home, but I had a DM (who wanted me playing a Wizard instead it seemed since he gave me tons of things more designed for them over the campaign) who added to the existing list more than swapped out.
One of the spells I remember he added was Blindness/Deafness. Not Evocation, but for causing problems on a battle field, it did what it was supposed to.
I could probably find the list if you were interested.
Has anyone here thought of making an Eldritch Knight using Warmage as the Arcane component? Lower levels would suck, but once you qualify for the PrC you'd be getting full BAB and only slightly staggered spellcasting...
I haven't tried it yet so I can't say how it would turn out, but sounds tasty...
If you go with the PHB2 advanced learning variant - then maybe go Abjurant Champion instead. It doesn't stagger your casting, you still get the BAB - and if you take a couple abjurations - you can cast them quickened.
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Play up the Warmage aspect.
*Fireball*
"What the hells was that?"
"Detect magic, Warmage style, if it survived, it must be magic."
(later, playing Bloody Jack's Gold)
"Ok, the room ahead is full of undead, but I'm low on turns for the day."
"Oh, let me handle it." *sudden empowered/widended dimensional fireball*
*Walks into the room of charred and destroyed undead. "Turning undead, warmage style."
More seriously, I don't like messing with the specialist class spell list. Check with your GM to see if he'll allow extra spell to grab spells off of your spell list (ala expanded knowlege from the XPH).
Play up the Warmage aspect.
** spoiler omitted **
As I'm playing a warmage in a campaign session this evening, consider your riffing stolen! Thanks!
As I'm playing a warmage in a campaign session this evening, consider your riffing stolen! Thanks!Play up the Warmage aspect.
** spoiler omitted **
Please, a warmage using fireball? How quaint. What you really need to play up is rocks (hail of stone). Why might you ask? Well, its a relatively low power spell in the grand scheme of things, but it has special qualities, there is no save, no spell resitance, you just get hit with rocks, deal with it. So it caps at 5d4+edge, think about how much that 5d4+edge matters against the superevation rogue, or that golem you would normally look at and shake your fist. I once used hail of stone in conjunction with boots of spiderclimb, and a little melfs acid arrow to solo a monster that was supposed to be a fight the party should not fight (runaway time). It was CR 10, we were level 5, it had spell resistance i would normally have alot of trouble getting through. I walked up the wall out of its reach (the roof was interestingly quite high) and pegged it with hail of stone with a little acid arrow mixed in untill it stopped moving. My DM was displeased, but the party liked the xp.
My answer with that warmage is 'rocks'. Not fireball.
Please, a warmage using fireball? How quaint. What you really need to play up is rocks (hail of stone). Why might you ask? Well, its a relatively low power spell in the grand scheme of things, but it has special qualities, there is no save, no spell resitance, you just get hit with rocks, deal with it. So it caps at 5d4+edge, think about how much that 5d4+edge matters against the superevation rogue, or that golem you would normally look at and shake your fist. I once used hail of stone in conjunction with boots of spiderclimb, and a little melfs acid arrow to solo a monster that was supposed to be a fight the party should not fight (runaway time). It was CR 10, we were level 5, it had spell resistance i would normally have alot of trouble getting through. I walked up the wall out of its reach (the roof was interestingly quite high) and pegged it with hail of stone with a little acid arrow mixed in untill it stopped moving. My DM was displeased, but the party liked the xp.
My answer with that warmage is 'rocks'. Not fireball.
Nice pun!
Actually, I have used hail of stone on a number of different occassions where if you just drop them right in the center of adjacent occupied squares, you can get a least four mooks in a 5' radius from the center.
The only draw back to that spell is that it requires a full round to cast instead of a standard action. Those vital six seconds can disrupt if someone decides to target me and I end up losing the spell before it is my turn in initiative the next round.
I just like Matthew's riffing because it borders on absurdity and will draw a couple of chuckles and or raised eyebrows when the rest of the party wonders how the warmage is able to turn undead.
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Honestly, I thought the Eclectic Learning alternate class feature from the PHB2 pretty much handled the Warmage issues I had when I played one. Hell, I even threw up Tenser's Transformation and kicked some ass with a Greataxe every once in a while. :)
+1
I've seen two people play a Warmage, and both were very effective.
One heavily used E.L. to get things like Rope Trick etc, so his effectiveness was pretty good.
I've seen one other player play an arcane sorcerer (no wizards) so the Warmages (and Bards) are pretty much it for Arcane casters in the games I run and the games I play. I don't know why it is that most don't play Wizards.
As for the OP, I don't believe (from my experience) that improving the Warmage by directly adding spells to their spell list is a good idea. It is against the character concept, and the huge boost to the power pretty much makes it far more effective than a Wizard or Sorcerer could ever be.
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I didn't add spells, I replaced a number of them (with 90% evocation I might add)
Let me rephrase. So long as you added spells to the list that are not "more blasty ways" then you have added spells to the warmage list without taking any from it.
In other words, for balance reasons it doesn't matter if you removed some less useful blast spells. You added non-blast spells, which you shouldn't have done.
To do what you want to do, you need to lower the number of spells per day.
I have to admit, when I updated the warmage to PF for my own campaigns, I added spells to his list. But... the spells I added were just blasty spells. Mainly, I went through and tried to make sure he had one of every element, and one non-element, of each spell level. I stole spells from the spell compendium, PF, etc, until I was satisfied that he had 6 different ways to blast instead of 6 different ways to cast fire at a given level.
I did give the warmage access to a limited set of the sorcerer bloodlines as well (arcane, elemental, draconic, and the diabolic (can't remember the name for the devil/demon ones)). But other than that, no changes. I've played warmages before in the few games I played in, and they were pretty good against 3.5 core classes, more than even matches. Which meant, to me, they needed a minor update for PF (since the core classes got an update). But I didn't want to change the core of the class, I wanted to keep him as a magical arsenal, not a general wizard in armor.
I have to admit, when I updated the warmage to PF for my own campaigns, I added spells to his list. But... the spells I added were just blasty spells. Mainly, I went through and tried to make sure he had one of every element, and one non-element, of each spell level. I stole spells from the spell compendium, PF, etc, until I was satisfied that he had 6 different ways to blast instead of 6 different ways to cast fire at a given level.
I did give the warmage access to a limited set of the sorcerer bloodlines as well (arcane, elemental, draconic, and the diabolic (can't remember the name for the devil/demon ones)). But other than that, no changes. I've played warmages before in the few games I played in, and they were pretty good against 3.5 core classes, more than even matches. Which meant, to me, they needed a minor update for PF (since the core classes got an update). But I didn't want to change the core of the class, I wanted to keep him as a magical arsenal, not a general wizard in armor.
This sounds very in-line with the Warmage flavour.