Anyone got a good Fighter/Mage build?

I'm not familiar with the Eldritch Knight's abilities but the biggest problem a Fighter/Mage is they can't effectively cast spells when wearing armor (especially the heavier types).

Our party has a sorcerer whose player wanted to be a better fighter. So she began taking levels in Spellsword (Tome and Blood) as well as 2 levels in Fighter. The spellsword ability allows her to wear heavier armor (including Plate Mail eventually) without worrying about Spell Failure. Not to mention that every two levels of Spellsword count as 1 level in sorcerer as well (as far as spell-casting ability).

Here's an armourless fighter/mage build I put together for a game a while back. He started at 10th level, which made him a 7th level caster at that point. The concept was to put together a decent fighter/wizard without having to dip into spellsword to be able to wear armour. Taking some Craft feats helped out a lot.

Human Fighter2/Wizard6/Eldritch knight1

Feats: Weapon focus (quarterstaff), two-weapon fighting, luck of heroes (FR regional feat), scribe scroll, combat expertise, dodge, quick staff (CW), craft wondrous item, craft arms and armour, two-weapon defense

He fights with a +1/+1 holy/shock darkwood quarterstaff (the party cleric helped with the prerequisites for holy) Most of his items were crafted himself, which saved a ton of cash on character creation.
His armour comes from:
Bracers of armour +3 (+3 armour)
Luck of heroes (+1 luck)
Gloves of dexterity +4 (+2 unnamed)
Amulet of natural armour +2 (+2 natural armour)
Dex 17 (+3 unnamed)
Which gives him a total AC of 21 to start.

Then, when he fights with his staff, he gains a +1 shield bonus from two-weapon defense, which increases to +2 if he fights defensively, in addition to the normal bonus for fighting defensively. If he takes a -1 penalty to use combat expertise, he gains a +3 dodge bonus to AC. So his AC was generally at 25, since he usually took the penalty for combat expertise. +1 to his dodge target.

When he was fighting a really tough enemy, he'd cast Shield and Displacement, bringing his AC up to 28 (overlaps with TWD) and giving a 50% miss chance for most of the fight. He also had the option of switching between two-weapon fighting with the staff and using it as a two-handed weapon when he really wanted to dish out damage fast. Considering he also made himself a belt of giant strength, he wasn't too shabby in that department as well.

Importantly, he didn't lose that much by multiclassing, although his BAB was a little on the low side. But he was casting 4th level spells at 10th level, and would gain 9th level spells at level 20, which isn't too shabby for a multiclass wizard. IMO, the extra spell ability made up for the reduced BAB. Heroism, Haste, and of course Polymorph help a lot to close the gap. Besides just dishing out damage, he was able to contribute a lot of versatility to the party by leaving slots open for utility spells when the need arose, as well as having an arsenal of scrolls.

I had a lot of fun with this character, and then the DM suddenly dropped the campaign for some reason...oh well, maybe he'll live on in another campaign now.

How bout a Bard 1/fighter 6/Suel Arcanemach x/spell sword 1
there are heafty skill requirements, all crossclass unless you take bard, but with high int or a open minded feat will compensate.
the Arcanemach gives 3/4 BA, d8 HD but nice benies such as hard to dispel personal spells, automatic extends and dispelling strike. The 1 lvl of Spellsword gives -10% to spell failure,
To make this build more effective try and wheedle fractional BAB; It only takes 4 lvl of SA to get 3rd lvl spells, then you could kick over to EK for better BAB

What about Swashbuckler/Wizard combinations, with regard to Eldritch Knight?

Corinth said:

What about Swashbuckler/Wizard combinations, with regard to Eldritch Knight?

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The level 3 Swashbuckler ability to add Int bonus to melee damage does work pretty well for Wizard Eldritch Knights, although losing 4 levels of casting ability also hurts.

Rystil Arden said:

The level 3 Swashbuckler ability to add Int bonus to melee damage does work pretty well for Wizard Eldritch Knights, although losing 4 levels of casting ability also hurts.

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Would the Arcane Strike and Practiced Spellcaster feats help make up that gap in raw magical power? I think that, given that this character wouldn't have 8th & 8th level spells, you might want to go with using magic more to supplement the character's warrior abilities, even if that's only done by degrees.

Corinth said:

Would the Arcane Strike and Practiced Spellcaster feats help make up that gap in raw magical power? I think that, given that this character wouldn't have 8th & 8th level spells, you might want to go with using magic more to supplement the character's warrior abilities, even if that's only done by degrees.

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The feats would certainly help, especially since the character's CL deficit is exactly 4, so Practised Spellcaster is at its peak. This build would be more viable at high levels, as the main problem is the first 10 or so. When the poor character is a Swa3/Wiz3/EKn1, with the spells of a 3rd-level wizard and the same BAB as the party's cleric, even a caster level of 7 won't make her feel less glum. By the time you hit Swa3/Wiz3/EKn9, with 6th-level spells as opposed to your wizard's 8th-level spells, full caster level though, and BAB 13 (two better than the cleric, although you have the same numbers of attacks as she does at this level), the outlook is brighter. You peak out at Swa3/Wiz4/EKn10/Spellsword1, with BAB 16 and thus 4 attacks and the spells of a 14th-level wizard (so 7th-level spells to the dedicated caster's 9th-level).

No mention of Warmage in this thread. I guess the reason is that the orginal poster asked about fighter/mage, not fighter/warmage. Is there any other reason? Fighter/warmage seems like it would have lots of potential with its armor capabilities and additional damage, but I have never done such a build myself. Thoughts?

On further inspection, you have to take two feats as a Swashbuckler to even qualify for Spellsword, but if you did and you advanced to level 3 in Spellsword with your final 2 levels, you could wear any Twilight Mithral armour except Half-Plate with no spell failure (although you lose the Swashbuckler damage bonus in TM Full Plate, Banded Mail, and Splint Mail) and you could cast 8th-level spells. And you'd get back one of your feats from level 2 of Spellsword.

darkelfo said:

No mention of Warmage in this thread. I guess the reason is that the orginal poster asked about fighter/mage, not fighter/warmage. Is there any other reason? Fighter/warmage seems like it would have lots of potential with its armor capabilities and additional damage, but I have never done such a build myself. Thoughts?

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Fighter/Warmage is probably a poor choice, for the same reason that a red dragon shouldn't take fireball and the like for all of her spells. The point of a Fighter/Mage is to synergise the magic and fighting, and good combat skills do not synergise well with the warmage, since both are focused on doing damage in different ways. On the other hand, the versatility to buff (which will then help with her physical combat aspect, yay!) and cast utlity spells is highly important for a fighter/mage.

In short: Someone who can already deal good combat damage is making a poor choice to take magic that can only do damage (at a suboptimal rate compared to a full warmage), and similarly a warmage, who can already blast for large amounts of damage, is doing herself a disservice in crippling her spells in an attempt to allow herself to deal weapon damage better.