FrankTrollman said:
Spellsword has problems.
The biggest problem, of course, is that if your goal is to cast spells in armor and stab people, you're better off just taking a mix of Fighter Wizard levels.
Let's look at a standard Spellsword:
You can take the class after 3 levels of Fighter, and 3 levels of Wizard.
So taking 10 levels of Spellsword:
Your BAB is +11.
Your Caster level is 8, and you can cast 4th level spells in armor.
You have gained 1 bonus fighter feat.
You have a Sword Cache - which is a very fancy way of saying you have Brew Potion.
OR you could take 3 levels of Fighter and 7 levels of Wizard:
Your BAB is +11.
Your Caster level is 10, and you can cast 4th level spells in armor.
You have gained 2 bonus fighter feats.
You have gained 2 bonus Wizard feats, one of which is Brew Potion, and the other is Still Spell (since your caster level is 2 higher, you can just prepare your 4th level spells as 5th level Still spells and have the same number of them and cast them without somatic components).
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If you think the Fighter 6 / Wizard 10 is an overpowered build - maybe the Spellsword is balanced. Otherwise, it stinks.
-Frank
I see your points. Doesn't this make the EK an even more potent build at 16th level than even the Fighter/Wizard build ?
Here's a comparison:
Progression
Ftr 1 1 ftr feat, +1 BAB, 10 HP
Wiz 5 1 wiz feat, +2 BAB, 5 caster levels, 5d4 HP
EK 10 1 ftr feat, +10 BAB 9 caster levels, 10d6 HP
Benefit Summary
BAB +13/+8/+3
2 ftr feats
1 wiz feat (still spell)
Caster level 14
Can cast 6th lvl spells in heavy armor w/shield
10 + 5d4 + 10d6 HP (avg 57)
Progression
Ftr 6 4 ftr feat, +6 BAB, 10 + 5d10 HP
Wiz 10 2 wiz feat, +5 BAB, 10 caster levels, 10d4 HP
Benefit Summary
BAB +11/+6/+1
4 ftr feats
2 wiz feats
Caster Level 10
Casts 4th lvl spells in heavy armor w/shield
10 + 5d10 + 10d4 HP (avg 62)
The EK is down slightly in HP from the Ftr/Wiz, but can cast 2 more spell levels (stilling all spells) than the Ftr/Wiz. With those extra spell levels, your probably happy to toss out the 3 extra bonus feats a straight Ftr/Wiz would gain.
Of course, the EK doesn't really start to own Ftr/Wiz builds until higher levels (such as this), but I think it is an interesting comparison.
Later,
DM2