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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steampunkette" data-source="post: 9439623" data-attributes="member: 6796468">Swordmage, or the only lightly implied Swordsage, to me, is better than "Pendragon" -because- it lacks a strict narrative element while providing hints at a narrative in a broad manner.That's the allure of the Fighter. Any kind of fighter can be a fighter. You can make a Samurai or a romantic Knight or a scruffy Nerfherder or a Soldier all within the same class.Putting too much narrative into a class, defining it so precisely that it essentially needs a specific setting, causes problems. I'm worried about my Warcaster for that reason, even though they're a cantrip-casting fighter-type class with a gishy subclass.I made them students of war. Of military schools the same way a Wizard might have a mentor in a tower. Which implies that any setting with warcasters needs to have military schools capable of training magical artillery.I still think it'll work, though, because I tried to keep it light beyond that.But the Pendragon is a Fighter-Sorcerer of a powerful, presumably noble, bloodline. That definitely shrinks the options for character creation significantly. And the fact that it's named after characters in Arthurian Legend, specifically, adds another narrative expectation onto all of them.Mechanically, I think it's very cool. The ability to multi-attack but if you miss your first shot swap to a cantrip is a neat 'Failsafe' gishiness. Though the opportunity cost is kinda nutty when you've got them swinging a Weapon+1d12 attack at level 1 and if they swing with a regular attack and hit they're gonna trade 2d12 damage for a single weapon attack's swing.It does hit a big part of the 'Core' of gishiness, which is spellcasting and melee and armor. But I think a stronger flavor of gishing would be to attack -and- cast, rather than attack -or- cast, on a given turn.Which I haven't even fully figured out how to do in a balanced manner, even using only cantrips. The closest I got was splitcasting cantrips to make multiple attacks as you gain levels (four 1d10 Firebolts rather than one 4d10 Firebolt) and a Spellstrike ability to put cantrips into your weapon (dealing weapon+cantrip damage on a hit) with a Multistrike replacement for Extra Attack making it so you can only swing twice on your action and a weak bonus-action attack with the same weapon.But that's only for the Swordsage archetype.</blockquote>

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