Hardhead
Explorer
One of my players is playing a fighter/mage and was interested in what prestige classes were available to him. At first, he was thinking about the Spellsword, but scoffed when he saw it. He feels it's too weak.
Now, I'm not against making modifications to a prestige class if I think it's too powerful or too weak, but I want to be careful about my game balance.
So, basically, I want to know everyone else's opinion. Is the Spellsword weak, and if so what can be done to make it balanced.
In sumary, my player's concerns:
1. Gaining a bonus spellcasting level only every other level will mean he'll quickly drop in in usefulness to the party.
2. With only a Medium BAB, and most of his levels in Wizard, he'll never have a good enough BAB to hit anything very reliably. Essentially, he'll loose spellcasting prowess while still not being even a decent melee combatant.
3. Spell channeling is just useless. No matter how many levels he has, it can only be done once per day, and only with *really* low level spells. It essentially gives you an extra partial action used for spellcasting once per day, but only for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level spells, depending on the Spellsword's level. I have to agree with him here, especially. Spellchanneling is a very lame and overly-limited ability.
4. The arcane spell failure reduction is good, but he can always just buy some bracers of armor. Besides, he has a 16 dex already. (Note: however, with the max 30% reduction he gets, he can wear a breastplate and use a buckler with no chance of spell failure - with enchantments put on those, the max armor bonus he can get is higher than from bracers, obviously. But still, not enough to justify loosing all those spellcasting levels).
I suppose I could add a few more levels of bonus spellcasting, but how many? I also guess I could increase the BAB progression to good (he'd still be pretty far behind the fighters, and not have the fighting feats). But should I use these solutions? If so, which one? Is there even a problem?
Any thoughts very appreciated.
- Z a c h
Now, I'm not against making modifications to a prestige class if I think it's too powerful or too weak, but I want to be careful about my game balance.
So, basically, I want to know everyone else's opinion. Is the Spellsword weak, and if so what can be done to make it balanced.
In sumary, my player's concerns:
1. Gaining a bonus spellcasting level only every other level will mean he'll quickly drop in in usefulness to the party.
2. With only a Medium BAB, and most of his levels in Wizard, he'll never have a good enough BAB to hit anything very reliably. Essentially, he'll loose spellcasting prowess while still not being even a decent melee combatant.
3. Spell channeling is just useless. No matter how many levels he has, it can only be done once per day, and only with *really* low level spells. It essentially gives you an extra partial action used for spellcasting once per day, but only for 1st, 2nd, or 3rd level spells, depending on the Spellsword's level. I have to agree with him here, especially. Spellchanneling is a very lame and overly-limited ability.
4. The arcane spell failure reduction is good, but he can always just buy some bracers of armor. Besides, he has a 16 dex already. (Note: however, with the max 30% reduction he gets, he can wear a breastplate and use a buckler with no chance of spell failure - with enchantments put on those, the max armor bonus he can get is higher than from bracers, obviously. But still, not enough to justify loosing all those spellcasting levels).
I suppose I could add a few more levels of bonus spellcasting, but how many? I also guess I could increase the BAB progression to good (he'd still be pretty far behind the fighters, and not have the fighting feats). But should I use these solutions? If so, which one? Is there even a problem?
Any thoughts very appreciated.
- Z a c h