Garthanos
Arcadian Knight
Taking it causes you to be a multiclassed as a swordmage.
Swordmage Feat Swordbond for a Warden - Thoughts?
- Thread starter Minifig
- Start date
Taking it causes you to be a multiclassed as a swordmage.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Right, but if you take it, you then become a multiclassed Swordmage.
Multiclassing (by default) in 4e is done through feats. You take Multiclass Feats to become multiclassed. Essentially, this will let you take future feats to swap Warden powers out in exchange for Swordmage powers.
Now, I'm not a solid rulesninja enough to tell you if there's a Swordmage power that might be really worth that feat cost. If your Int is decent or your Strength is decent, Warden and Swordmage can play pretty well together, theoretically. You'll be a handy-dandy teleporting/area marking machine. You'll be mostly a warden, who can do some neat things with their sword when making melee attacks.
Which might be nice. Or at least fun for you.
It might not be mechanically optimal. 4e characters aren't often disarmed for any reason. I guess maybe you could slap your bond on a dagger or something and throw it, retrieve it, and repeat. But that's not exceptionally effective.
If you were looking for raw power, I'd grab Weapon Expertise and Weapon Focus and Toughness and Sudden Roots (and that's basically your first 6 levels' worth of feats).If you wanted to go with a optimized multiclass swordmage, I might recommend Blade Initiate instead. It will mean you don't need a shield as a warden, and, even if you use a shield, you'll get a +1 AC anyway, which is always cool.
If you were to go and take swordmage powers later, I'd steer towards powers without the "Implement" keyword, and without the "Aegis of *" lines. Those are the most likely to be useful for you. And, hey, there's some fairly neat abilities there, though likely nothing that's going to stand out as amazing for a warden to have.
But that feat, by itself, does make you a multiclass swordmage, and isn't, by itself, all that useful.
Minifig
First Post
Right, but if you take it, you then become a multiclassed Swordmage.
Multiclassing (by default) in 4e is done through feats. You take Multiclass Feats to become multiclassed. Essentially, this will let you take future feats to swap Warden powers out in exchange for Swordmage powers.
Now, I'm not a solid rulesninja enough to tell you if there's a Swordmage power that might be really worth that feat cost. If your Int is decent or your Strength is decent, Warden and Swordmage can play pretty well together, theoretically. You'll be a handy-dandy teleporting/area marking machine. You'll be mostly a warden, who can do some neat things with their sword when making melee attacks.
Which might be nice. Or at least fun for you.
It might not be mechanically optimal. 4e characters aren't often disarmed for any reason. I guess maybe you could slap your bond on a dagger or something and throw it, retrieve it, and repeat. But that's not exceptionally effective.
If you wanted to go with a optimized multiclass swordmage, I might recommend Blade Initiate instead. It will mean you don't need a shield as a warden, and, even if you use a shield, you'll get a +1 AC anyway, which is always cool.
If you were to go and take swordmage powers later, I'd steer towards powers without the "Implement" keyword, and without the "Aegis of *" lines. Those are the most likely to be useful for you. And, hey, there's some fairly neat abilities there, though likely nothing that's going to stand out as amazing for a warden to have.
But that feat, by itself, does make you a multiclass swordmage, and isn't, by itself, all that useful.
Great post.. Thank you for your input.
Here's what I'm looking at at least... so far:
Weapons and stuff may change of course, but, yeah.. this is .. the general jist of it.. I don't think I'll be taking that if it multiclasses me.
Course, that's a ways away as I'm only level 2 at the moment...
RandomCitizenX
First Post
Just curious, but if you aren't planning on multiclassing into anything else why not take the feat if you like the flavor of being able to call your sword to you? It isn't like you are required to deviate from your Warden powers.
Minifig
First Post
I thought it might be useful if my sword breaks or gets separated from me..
I remembered back in my old D&D games that weapons would break and be taken away and etc, It seemed a lot of you tend to agree that it's useless for me (or a Warden in general), so I decided to call my DM and ask him about it.. and when he said it would probably be highly useless in our campaign, it powered over my decision not to take it.
I remembered back in my old D&D games that weapons would break and be taken away and etc, It seemed a lot of you tend to agree that it's useless for me (or a Warden in general), so I decided to call my DM and ask him about it.. and when he said it would probably be highly useless in our campaign, it powered over my decision not to take it.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Looks pretty solid.
FYI, keep an eye out for any power with the "Wildblood" line. Those are going to have an extra kicker for your Warden build, and will likely be a bit more awesome than other abilities.
Also, tactics-wise, the Warden is at their best when they can keep creatures next to them, so keep an eye out for things that immobilize, slow, or otherwise stop critters from moving. At the beginning of your turn, you should mark anything that's next to you. Your mark doesn't last very long, so keep applying it. You probably know this already, but you want things trying to hit you (that's what your mark functions as), so AC and HP and other defense-boosters are going to pay off more in your party than attack-boosters. Still, having a few potent attacks is a good plan. Gonna be next to the guys, you might as well wail on 'em.
Which Skill Power did you pick up with your feat? Nature Sense is a pretty decent Level 2 Utility for your character, but keep in mind that a feat like Toughness or even Weapon Focus might be more useful over the long term than an additional utility power. Skill powers are fun (and don't let me chase you away if you just want it for character reasons), but it's probably not going to swing the balance in one direction or another. Lasting one more round because of Toughness or killing an enemy one round earlier because of Weapon Focus keeps the action economy on your side. The bonuses also scale with tier. Meanwhile, a feat like Sudden Roots keeps enemies who want to move away from doing so very far (unless they take their full turn to move away from you, you'll be able to keep up with them, even without much in the way of speed).
Nature's Abundance can be really useful if there's a rogue or assassin or some other "hidey" character around, and cover is generally useful, but if your allies are more mobile (monks and teleporters and the like), they might not want to sit next to you to get the benefit. You might also consider Warden's Tempest (to keep 'em close) or Erupting Font (to keep 'em marked). If your allies all like to stay in one place, then Nature's Abundance can make you all a big wall, but it might also make you all a big target for area-affect abilities (we're all in cover...and we're all targets of the dragon's breath, too...).
Again, I'm no big rulesninja, but there's some baseline advice.
Minifig
First Post
We may have two rogues.. I know we've got one, but we may have another soonish.
I took Nature Sense with it because we have two tanks.. me, the warden and a paladin, and it just seemed extremely beneficial to give us massive cover while we beat the crap out of stuff while the rogue has fun decimating stuff from behind.
I took Nature Sense with it because we have two tanks.. me, the warden and a paladin, and it just seemed extremely beneficial to give us massive cover while we beat the crap out of stuff while the rogue has fun decimating stuff from behind.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Is that the party? Two rogues, a warden, and a paladin?
I'd maybe pay attention to powers that can help shore you up against missing roles. You'll be pretty good as a Warden against masses of enemies (the usual Controller niche), because you can mark big groups. You might want to look at things that hit groups (like Hungry Earth) just so you can take down minions. You might also want to look at self-healing abilities (like Strength of Stone) so that the Paladin's healing isn't the only stuff in the party.
The paladin will more often go after "the big guy," while you're mopping up the minions. If you've got two rogues, you each might want to take one to protect, and try to keep your marks on critters that want to take out your rogues (and keep whatever buffs you generate going to them).
If you've got a leader or a controller, though, the need for that is mitigated.
Minifig
First Post
OH HECK NO!
Me: Warden.
Paladin.
Possible Rogue, Bard, or Sorc (he doesn't know what he's rerolling as yet..) used to be a Warlock.
Rogue (and this guy rocks.. he consistently rolls natural 20s!)
Artificer
Cleric
Wizard
*thinks*
I think that's the whole party.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Solid party. Two leaders, two defenders, possibly two strikers (or three leaders), and a controller.
Maybe when choosing powers think about doubling-up on controllery things that affect masses of critters, but you don't need to shore up anything, which leaves you free to experiment.
Maybe when choosing powers think about doubling-up on controllery things that affect masses of critters, but you don't need to shore up anything, which leaves you free to experiment.
