D&D 5E Concepts for an arcane half-caster/gish

[Zardnaar]

I'm pretty sure allowing the extra attack action -either the weapon and spell at the same time or "magically charge" your weapon attack for extra damage (a la smite), are their "extra damage" mechanic. So I don't see a "need" for something giving them MORE extra damage.

Cantrips, for me, are off the table because they are 5e half-casters. 5 spell levels of progression. No cantrips. That's the 5e half-caster framework.

I could see altering the "Eldritch Smite" ability to allow the class to alter the damage type for their magical damage. That's easy enough.

Half casters can get them though if we gave this class some can trips it makes it different than Ranger/Paladin. Just have to keep in mind the high elf and magic initiate feats in terms of green flame blade existing. Giving the class an elemental weapon damage mitigation like paladins smite and something else makes it roughly equivalent to Paladin/Ranger. Could combine the two have the smite deal a bit less damage than the Paladins smite but have the extra damage deal elemental damage of your choice.

Another hook could be bonus damage while buffed or the defensive build could sacrifice spell slots to mitgate damage at the same rate as the Paladins smite (1d8/spell level + 1d8).

Just keep in mind there are things like Avenging Paladins which can get extra damage via smites, class features and hunters quarry and the hunter ranger also gets bonus damage via class features and hunters quarry.

If the bonus damage is every round e cn look at hex and hunters quarry spells, if its front loaded we can look at Paldi smite, if its in the middle or situational we can look at the hunter Ranger.

Swordmage is a terrible name for the class, archetype maybe, swordmage is better than argonaut however which is really the sailor back ground. I'm using Mageknight its not great however it will do as a place holder until someone thinks up something better. Duskblade could also be an archetype still not a great name.

3.5 had an arcane strike feat, if you want to put a smite mechanic on the class even if its tweaked from the Paladin ability what do you think of the name of that feat? It gave you a bonus to it and bonus dive of damage both depended on the level of the spell sacrificed. Our smite doesn't have to be a carbon copy of the paladins one. Giving the class cantrips as class features would be its equivalent of hex/hunters quarry especially at higher levels if they can cast cantrips as bonus action- could double as an extra damage feature like various ranger and hunter abilities and a fighters 3rd and 4th attack+action surge mechanic. The cantrip could be worked into an atack as wel and the cantrip is from a preselected list so no Greenflame blade abuse (you hit a foe add firebolt/shocking grasp/ray of frost/acid splash etc damage to them). Something like that is a level 11+ ability though.

Ideas for subclasses.

Defense/damage mitgation
Moar damage (elemental blade?)
Buffing
Giving your melee damage a ranged ability (see Sun Soul Monk).

 

[77IM]

Inspired by this thread, I put my money where my mouth is, and wrote up an Adept class:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1462

I gotta say, it's not too shabby. The narrative parts were MUCH harder than the mechanical parts. We've already got the Eldritch Knight at one end of the spectrum, the Bladesinger at the other, the multiclass fighter/wizard in the middle, the bloodhunter off to one side, and the paladin off to the other. So it was kind of a challenge to find a niche for a true arcane half-caster.

Ultimately I decided to align the class's purpose with the player's purpose: adepts learn both combat and magic because knowing both combat and magic is awesome.

The stories for the subclasses are a bit better. Spellblade is sort of a generic adept, a magical duelist. Vigilante is a skill-oriented trickster who can turn invisible, and benefits the most from ranged weapons and concentration spells. Warder is a defensive class who can teleport around to mess with people and also makes a good bodyguard.

Mechanically, adept seems a little strong, but I'm assuming that MAD is a balancing factor (which is maybe a bad assumption). Interestingly, since there are so few Str/Int races, the best lv1 adepts will be humans or half-elves. This seems strangely appropriate for the flavor of the class. The adept's other big mechanical weakness is that they're not proficient in Con saves and get no abilities to help with concentration. This should make for some really difficult trade-offs at character creation and during combat.