At 1st level, the spell warrior receives the Improved Counterspell feat as a bonus feat. This ability replaces Scribe Scroll.
Improved Counterspell requires that you use a spell of the same school that is one or more spell levels higher than the target spell.
The problem is that the Skald (of which Spell Warrior is an archetype) uses Bard spell list and spell progression. They are slow to get higher level spells, never get any of spell levels 7-9, and the majority of their spells are Enchantments. This makes them terrible for counter spelling.
Doesn't seem very useful.
Am I missing something here, or did the designers really intend to give them an almost completely useless ability?
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First thing, Paizo is all about bad archtypes and giving worthless abilities, so don't be surprised when you happen to come across them.
Second thing, read the rest of the archetype.
At 5th level, the spell warrior gains increased versatility when attempting to counteract enemy spellcasting. When counterspelling, he can expend two skald spell slots of the same level or higher than the opponent's spell, regardless of the school of that spell.
At 11th level, when counterspelling an opponent's spell, the spell warrior only has to expend one skald spell slot of the level of the spell being cast.
At 17th level, the spell warrior gains Parry Spell as a bonus feat. The skald does not have to meet the prerequisites for this feat.
This ability replaces spell kenning.
At 10th level, a spell warrior can sacrifice his own rage magic to counter an opponent's spell. When using raging song, he can counterspell as an immediate action without interrupting his raging song. However, in addition to expending a spell slot (or spell slots) to attempt to counter the opponent's spell, the skald must expend 1 round of raging song per spell level of the opponent's spell (for example, if attempting to counterspell a 3rd-level spell, the skald must expend one of his own 3rd-level spell slots and 3 rounds of raging song).
This ability replaces the dirge of doom raging song.
It takes a while to come online, but eventually it becomes a decent counter speller. Decent mind you, not great. It's certainly no Arcanist in that regard. Whether or not the archetype is actually worth taking is still debatable though as Enhance Weapons is laughably inferior to Inspired Rage and you also lose Spell Kenning.
Actually, I had read all of the archetype.
You are still using Skald spell progression, which means you can not use the counter spell against the top level spells of opponent wizards or sorcerers.
The thing that I find useful about the archetype is the Weapon Song since (unlike Rage Song) there is no reason for people to refuse the buff and it stacks with any other buff. I was looking at it as a one level dip, comparing it to Skald, Bard, and the various archetypes of each.
You only discussed the 1st level ability and made statements about the whole archetype and brought up a downside that was negated by Greater Counterspell (the enchantment heaviness of the spell list); that made me think you did in fact miss something in the archetype. You didn't specify you were looking at it from the perspective of a one level dip, so it sounded like you were judging the whole archetype based on the fact that it isn't extremely front loaded.
Spell progression is a downside of the archetype, but you do eventually get immediate action counters, which is a plus. That said, it's still a pretty bleh archetype, but perhaps not terrible.
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Whether or not the archetype is actually worth taking is still debatable though as Enhance Weapons is laughably inferior to Inspired Rage and you also lose Spell Kenning.
I don't know.
Inspired rage:
+1 to hit with melee, if you don't use weapon finess
+1-2 damage to hit with melee, if you don't use agile or dex to damage.
+1 Hp per level, that goes away when the rage ends
-1 AC
Lose all spell casting
Lose most skills
There is an fairly narrow range of PCs who can benefit from this.
Enhance Weapon:
At low levels, this is:
+1 to hit with all weapons.
+1 to damage with all weapons.
Includes rays and other "weapon like" spells.
no minus AC
No spell / skill lockout
At higher levels, this is:
(Pick two)
Free ghost touch when needed (effectively 2x damage in those fights)
1d6 energy damage every hit (selectable to match vulnerabilities.)
Keen
returning
seeking.
@FLite
I was considering the granting of Rage Powers to be why Inspired Rage was superior to Enhance Weapon, but now that I look at the rules more closely, Spell Warrior is worse than I thought. Under the Rage Powers listing for Skald there is this sentence:
"At 3rd level and every 3 levels thereafter, a skald learns a rage power that affects the skald and any allies under the influence of his inspired rage"
You don't have Inspired Rage. Not only can't you give allies Rage Powers, but you cannot use them yourself unless you dip into a class to get access to Rage. Rage Powers don't get replaced by the archetype so they are now essentially a defunct class feature.
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@FLite
I was considering the granting of Rage Powers to be why Inspired Rage was superior to Enhance Weapon, but now that I look at the rules more closely, Spell Warrior is worse than I thought. Under the Rage Powers listing for Skald there is this sentence:
"At 3rd level and every 3 levels thereafter, a skald learns a rage power that affects the skald and any allies under the influence of his inspired rage"
You don't have Inspired Rage. Not only can't you give allies Rage Powers, but you cannot use them yourself unless you dip into a class to get access to Rage. Rage Powers don't get replaced by the archetype so they are now essentially a defunct class feature.
Actually, that is supposedly fixed in the errata. There is a post to that effect somewhere on the board. Namely that enhance weapon grants you and all allies whose weapons you enhance your skald rage powers.
Preview of errata is here.
To the best of my knowledge, we don't yet have the final version of the ACG errata. I'm still hoping it comes out soon.
@Cavall I agree about spell kenning.
I like the part of this archetype that allows the enchanting of the party's weapons.
The loss of spell kenning in exchange for lack-luster counterspelling makes me think that this archetype is only for dipping. I'm having trouble envisioning a scenario where the counterspelling ability would be useful. Maybe when the BBEG is an anti-paladin, bloodrager, or other 4 level caster?
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It is fixed in Errata and the Enhance Weapons song explicitly states it also benefits from Rage Powers the same way that Inspired Rage does.
However, the enhancement bonus only applies to permanent weapons, like swords, claws, fists, and barstools, not rays, which only exist for that instant.
The ability to not have Rage drawbacks makes it better for handing out Rage Powers like Good for What Ails You (APG; get drunk for another save chance vs lots of conditions), Guarded Life (APG; auto-stabilize when below 0HP; the song can count as "from another character"), Night Vision (CRB, who needs Torches?, then again, I'm instigating a riot, so not hard to find us, lol), and Lesser Celestial Totem (Champions of Purity, Your Healbot will love you) since these don't rely on weapons. Let the completely not-weapon using Wizard get his fist turned into a pimp hand so he can get fat heals.
Two and a half years have passed since this thread began, so the errata has reached the PRD itself. Weapon Song now says, "The wielder of a weapon enhanced by this raging song counts as if she were under the effect of an inspired rage raging song for all purposes involving the skald's rage powers."
My Iron Gods campaign has a skald with no archetypes who took Leadership and gained a lyrakien Spell Warrior skald as an apprentice. Not only does the Leadership cohort lose two levels, but I also penalized him another level due to his lyrakien race. I think he has used his counterspell ability twice in about 40 game sessions, once against the spells of a minion of similar level to his, and once against a higher-level caster casting a low-level defensive buff on himself. The vanilla skald's Spell Kenning, in contrast, is used in half of the game sessions.
We also let the rage powers from the vanilla skald's Rage Song stack with the rage powers from the Spell Warrior's Weapon Song and both stack with the bloodrager's bloodline powers from her Bloodrage, so the PCs have lots of rage powers at once. This contradicts the FAQ: Anger management: If I am in a rage, or an Unchained rage, or a bloodrage, or some similar form of rage, can I stack up as many benefits as possible? No., but stacking the rage powers is much easier to track compared to forcing players to choose each round.
A further weakness of the Weapon Song is that the 12th-level Spell Warrior skald can give a +3 to three weapons, but the party of 4 PCs and 4 NPCs has a lot more than 3 weapons. Hence, the Spell Warrior sticks to the +2 he learned at 5th level, because it can affect any number of weapons. He typically uses his Weapon Song to grant two weapon special abilities, such as flaming and keen, rather than a +2 enhancement bonus that does not stack with the enhancement bonuses already on the magic weapons.
Having a vanilla skald and a Spell Warrior skald together does work better than two vanilla skalds would.