What's the best fighter/mage class/Prc?

Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator
Staff member
Supporter
Balance schmalance- as long as everyone at the table has fun.

Yes, I do play "suboptimal" PCs on purpose. If the build fits the PC's character, so be it.
 

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Nifft

Penguin Herder
Dannyalcatraz said:
Balance schmalance- as long as everyone at the table has fun.

Yes, I do play "suboptimal" PCs on purpose. If the build fits the PC's character, so be it.
As long as you're going in to suboptimal with your eyes open, there's no problem.

The problem comes when a player tries to make a PC which matches his concept -- or just naively tries to make a PC -- and gets frustrated when his dude can't contribute as meaningfully as the other PCs.

It's always possible to self-gimp -- play a dude with one arm, for example. IMHO your degree of gimpiness should be orthogonal to your character concept.

Cheers, -- N
 

pawsplay

Hero
Nifft said:
PvP, the chain-gun tripper wins.

Against non-humanoids (which you'd expect PCs to fight every now and again), the Barbarian wins. Heavily.

That was my understanding, and it includes time spent over at the CharOpt board.

Cheers, -- N

I remember the fighter coming within a hair of the barbarian's damage output alone. I'm not even thinking exciting tactics, I remember the numbers favoring fighters. And that was pre-PHBII. I remember the calculations hinging on Power Attack becoming increasingly less useful as base damage increasing. And rage + PA + two hander is the only way a Barbarian is going to outclass a fighter.

I'm not sure why chain-trippers are such a hot item to begin with... the MAD is painful, and it's so easily fouled by facing the wrong opponents.
 

pawsplay

Hero
Dannyalcatraz said:
Balance schmalance- as long as everyone at the table has fun.

Yes, I do play "suboptimal" PCs on purpose. If the build fits the PC's character, so be it.

That's not suboptimal, that's just optimizing toward a particular purpose. Some people like "big numbers"... most such tricks leave me pretty cold, as a PC is far more likely to die from lack of versatility than lack of numbers.
 

Dannyalcatraz

Schmoderator
Staff member
Supporter
What I was referring to was the whole "which warrior class fights the best" & "X is broken" type stuff that's starting to pop up

Personally, I don't care if the best fighter in the game is a kobold bard*, as long as people are having fun.

*OK, I care enough to recognize that that would be a sign of bad design, but beyond that...
 

Nifft

Penguin Herder
Dannyalcatraz said:
Personally, I don't care if the best fighter in the game is a kobold bard*, as long as people are having fun.
Of course. Thing is, many people find being effective to be fun. :)

Also: * Deeeeeeeekin!

Cheers, -- N
 

Klaus

First Post
Holy Bovine said:
Thirded. I have a player playing a Duskblade Warforged in my Eberron game and he is working out beautifully. We've talked about how the DB is built and it really does seem to be the 3.5 answer to the classic Fighter/Mage class combo. Good fighting combined with good spellcasting equals great class, imo.
"Good spellcasting" wouldn't be how I'd describe the Duskblade. He mainly goes for evocations and self-buffing. The classic Fighter/Magic-User was more versatile than that.
 

Klaus

First Post
freyar said:
About the battle sorcerer: only recently looked at these, and they actually seem a little underpowered compared to the beguiler (again, not mage/fighter hybrid, but a point of comparison), basically because the battle sorc doesn't know as many spells or get as many per day (that's the biggy). Anyone thought about that?
The text in UA can be deceiving, so I applied the UA alterations to the Sorcerer entry in the SRD:

BATTLE SORCERER
Alignment: Any.
Hit Die: d8.

Class Skills
The battle sorcerer’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Profession (Wis), and Spellcraft (Int).
Skill Points at 1st Level: (2 + Int modifier) x 4.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int modifier.

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Class Features
All of the following are class features of the sorcerer.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Sorcerers are proficient with all simple weapons and with one light or one-handed martial weapon of the character’s choice. They are proficient with light armor, but not with shields. Armor of any type interferes with a sorcerer’s gestures, which can cause his spells with somatic components to fail (but see Armored Mage, below).

Spells: A sorcerer casts arcane spells which are drawn primarily from the sorcerer/wizard spell list. He can cast any spell he knows without preparing it ahead of time, the way a wizard or a cleric must (see below).
To learn or cast a spell, a sorcerer must have a Charisma score equal to at least 10 + the spell level. The Difficulty Class for a saving throw against a sorcerer’s spell is 10 + the spell level + the sorcerer’s Charisma modifier.
Like other spellcasters, a sorcerer can cast only a certain number of spells of each spell level per day. His base daily spell allotment is given on Table: The Sorcerer. In addition, he receives bonus spells per day if he has a high Charisma score.
A sorcerer’s selection of spells is extremely limited. A sorcerer begins play knowing four 0-level spells and two 1st-level spells of your choice. At each new sorcerer level, he gains one or more new spells, as indicated on Table: Sorcerer Spells Known. (Unlike spells per day, the number of spells a sorcerer knows is not affected by his Charisma score; the numbers on Table: Sorcerer Spells Known are fixed.) These new spells can be common spells chosen from the sorcerer/wizard spell list, or they can be unusual spells that the sorcerer has gained some understanding of by study. The sorcerer can’t use this method of spell acquisition to learn spells at a faster rate, however.
Upon reaching 4th level, and at every even-numbered sorcerer level after that (6th, 8th, and so on), a sorcerer can choose to learn a new spell in place of one he already knows. In effect, the sorcerer “loses” the old spell in exchange for the new one. The new spell’s level must be the same as that of the spell being exchanged, and it must be at least two levels lower than the highest-level sorcerer spell the sorcerer can cast. A sorcerer may swap only a single spell at any given level, and must choose whether or not to swap the spell at the same time that he gains new spells known for the level.
Unlike a wizard or a cleric, a sorcerer need not prepare his spells in advance. He can cast any spell he knows at any time, assuming he has not yet used up his spells per day for that spell level. He does not have to decide ahead of time which spells he’ll cast.

Armored Mage (Ex): A battle sorcerer´s spells suffer no chance of arcane spell failure from light armor.

Familiar: A sorcerer can obtain a familiar (see below). Doing so takes 24 hours and uses up magical materials that cost 100 gp. A familiar is a magical beast that resembles a small animal and is unusually tough and intelligent. The creature serves as a companion and servant.
The sorcerer chooses the kind of familiar he gets. As the sorcerer advances in level, his familiar also increases in power.
If the familiar dies or is dismissed by the sorcerer, the sorcerer must attempt a DC 15 Fortitude saving throw. Failure means he loses 200 experience points per sorcerer level; success reduces the loss to one-half that amount. However, a sorcerer’s experience point total can never go below 0 as the result of a familiar’s demise or dismissal. A slain or dismissed familiar cannot be replaced for a year and day. A slain familiar can be raised from the dead just as a character can be, and it does not lose a level or a Constitution point when this happy event occurs.
A character with more than one class that grants a familiar may have only one familiar at a time.
 

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JoelF

First Post
I'll throw out Green Star Adept from Complete Arcane as another PrC worth looking at. Leans a bit towards the fighter side of the equasion, but you can build a pretty mean 'gish' type character with it and in many ways be better than the straight fighter.
 

Darklone

Registered User
Nifft said:
You should never lump Fighter & Swashbuckler in the same group as Barbarian if you want to be taken seriously regarding balance issues.

Cheers, -- N
There's one small fix for the swashbuckler class: Daring Outlaw.
 

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