Sample Character request: Warrior/Mage

So out of curiosity ... how do the flavor/feel/mechanics of a fighter with the wizard multiclass feat compare with a wizard with the fighter multiclass feat?

Victim said:

A fighter wizard might be better with a 1 handed weapon so an implement in the off hand can provide a bonus to spell attacks.

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I agree. But someone wanted a guy with a big sword and magic. I took that as meaning 2-hander.

@Mindwanderer: thanks, forgot that in passing

Olgar Shiverstone said:

So out of curiosity ... how do the flavor/feel/mechanics of a fighter with the wizard multiclass feat compare with a wizard with the fighter multiclass feat?

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The former is a Fighter who can cast a spell once per encounter.

The latter is ... completely unnecessary. You don't need the Fighter multi-class feat to act like a Fighter. You need armor and hit points, both of which you can get via feats.

Cheers, -- N

Isn't there a feat that lets you use your weapon as if it was an implement, or was that holy symbols?

Incenjucar said:

Isn't there a feat that lets you use your weapon as if it was an implement, or was that holy symbols?

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There's the Spiral Tower paragon path, mentioned already.

There's the Staff, which is both a weapon and an implement. Same with the Pact Blade (warlock dagger) and Holy Avenger.

Cheers, -- N

Nifft said:

There's the Spiral Tower paragon path, mentioned already.

There's the Staff, which is both a weapon and an implement. Same with the Pact Blade (warlock dagger) and Holy Avenger.

Cheers, -- N

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What bothered me is that the pact blade doesn't benefit from proficiency bonuses. I thought it was clearly made to hamper eventual rogue/warlock uber dagger masters... Which was something I wanted to do.

Nifft said:

The former is a Fighter who can cast a spell once per encounter.

The latter is ... completely unnecessary. You don't need the Fighter multi-class feat to act like a Fighter. You need armor and hit points, both of which you can get via feats.

Cheers, -- N

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Very true, and I am not convinced that paragon multiclassing is worth it for any type of fighter/mage. Wizard of the Tower is a better paragon path since it allows you replace an implement with a sword and give weapon powers.

If you are a wizard and are going to spend a feat multiclassing then one of the other combat classes are better. And unless you are Eladrin then you have to spend feats to buy weapon proficiency for a sword. or whatever.

I think to get the gish feel start as figher and take up Arcane initiate and ritual casting and then work toward wizard of the tower.

The main thing with the gish situation is that defenders and controllers are usually just about on the opposite side of the battlefield, so it'll always take a bit more work to make things worthwhile.

Which is why Wizards does need a Swordmage class to play the part of the Arcane Defender.

Haven't read the whole thread, but I also like gish characters. I think they need to make a gish class, but with what we have right now, there's two possibilities I'm kinda thinking of. One is to gish with the Wizard class. This is what this post is about. The other is to gish with the warlock class, to exploit the fact that there are pactblades. This is more flexible, but less gishy.

For the wizard option, I think right now for a true gish, you're forced into the Wizard of the Spiral Tower, otherwise you have to keep switching weapon and implement. This means that you will be using a longsword, but that's a good fit for the gish character. It would be cool to truly multiclass at 11 into wizard, but then you would be stuck with switching between sword and implement. Why there is no "pact blade" for wizards, I will never understand. This would have been such a simple thing to add. You could go with staves, but staves suck.

A good gish type class is ranger (fighter is too tanky for my picture of the gish). The ranger attack powers are too good to pass up, but the wizard utilitary powers are a lot of fun. So I recommend to take the feat for utilitary powers. Here's a level 10 sketch.

Buckit the Human Ranger 10
STR 20 +5
CON 10
DEX 10
INT 18 +4
WIS 13 +1
CHA 8

Two weapon fighting style
Feats: weapon prof (bastard), weapon focus (bastard), wiz training, wiz util, +3 more (ritual caster?)

Gear: 2x bastard+2, hide+2, amulet+2

Defenses: AC 24, REF 22, FORT 23, WILL 18.

Main at-will is
Twin strike, 2x +15 vs AC 1d10+3

Sample encounter power
Claws of the griffon: main +15 vs AC 2d10+8, off-hand +15 vs AC 1d10+8.

Sample daily
Attacks on the Run: 2x +15 vs AC, 3d10+8.

Gish:
Encounter: Magic Missile, ranged 20, +9 vs Reflex, 2d4+4.
Util: expeditious retreat or dimension door or levitate or invisibility or anything else are all good.

Notes: You will use magic missile at first, but then once you get a +1 weapon you may scale back because your magic missile doesn't benefit from it. This will be corrected at 11. At level 11, you become Wizard of the Spiral Tower. Then you need to pick up a longsword, and possibly weapon focus (longsword). Keep it in the off-hand. In a bizarre turn of events, the WotST "spells" don't benefit from an implement, and the two attacks have the Weapon tag, so they benefit from weapon proficiency (!)

So, you might also want to get the other two wizard feats, to use your longsword implement (you wouldn't need it for magic missile!) Some good picks are disintegrate (omgwtfbbq! best daily 19?) Wizard encounter powers are not as good as ranger encounter powers... Rangers have lots of AoE type powers, and they often do more damage than wiz powers. Still, thunderlance (wiz encounter 13, int vs ref, 4d6+int to all creatures in clost blast 5) could kill lots of minions.