Paizo's new policy of making single classed characters more attractive than multiclassed ones was one of the selling factor of the Pathfinder system for me. However, with the limited number of classes available, some concepts got the short end of the stick and remain unviable, at least for a significant portion of the level progression, namely the arcane trickster and the eldritch knight, which can be a real burden during the mid-levels. Instead of doing revisions to the prestige classes I recently came up with two new base classes, the spellknight and the conmage. I tried to use existing abilities where possible and made some revisions to them where needed.
Download link here (a lot better looking than the google docs!)
The Spellknight is a martial arcane caster (or gish, if you will), which is loosely based on the duskblade from D&D 3.5. I was never a big fan of that class and pretty much built it again with a plethora of new abilities. The class is supposed to play out like an arcane counterpart to the paladin, "smiting" foes with its spellstrike.
The Conmage draws upon inspiration from a lot of classes, like the rogue, beguiler, spellthief and arcane trickster. It's a rogue/mage hybrid and is supposed to play out like a single classed arcane trickster.
These classes are nearly complete, but I still have to make the finishing touches. There are a few things that I want to run by you guys before I make these available to my players:
1) The names of the classes: These are pretty important to me. I dislike having multiple words in your class title, so arcane trickster and eldritch knight are right out. I think spellknight is pretty good and descriptive, but I'm not sure about conmage. The class is supposed to be a rogue/mage hybrid but I feel as if "conmage" is a bit heavy on the mage part. What do you guys think? Any suggestions?
2) Spell-lists: Usually, classes like this get there own spell-list, but I really don't see anything gamebreaking about giving them access to the sorcerer/wizard spells. It's also less of a hassle when new spells come out. Am I overseeing something?
3) Balance issues: Are there any glaring issues I'm not seeing?
Help would be appreciated, I'm starting a campaign this summer and I would like to have these classes as options for my players by then :)
Anyone?
I might give the spellknight Mettle instead of Evasion