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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StreamOfTheSky" data-source="post: 5174527" data-attributes="member: 35909">The Warmage is an odd case.  They're considered grossly underpowered, in that they fail to be anywhere near the best at their small chosen niche (blasting the living hell out of things) compared to other full casting arcanists.  And their chosen niche is widely considered the absolute weakest usage of spellcasting -- direct damage.  Add to that the fact that in D&D, enemies with 1 hp fight just as hard as those with 200, possibly harder, and the game tends to reward "focus fire," where you do large single target damage to eliminate foes systematically from the combat (and as an added bonus, cost their side actions per round, so the damage you take goes down) over area attacks.  A well built melee class can do equal or more damage than an evoker or warmage to a single target (largely thanks to Power Attack), and can do it all day long without using daily resources.   For these reasons, the Warmage's niche (which again, thanks to splat book spells and options for Wizards and Sorcerers, he's not even the best at) is considered a waste to pursue, from an optimization standpoint.On the other hand, Warmage is still a full caster with at least some versatility in his spell list, so it probably seems kind of silly to say they need help.What should be understood is, if you don't give a base caster class lots of actual good class features to keep them in, then the character will just go into a full casting prestige class for better benefits anyway.  I wanted to make Warmage 20 at least somewhat viable.  At the same time, I tried to make the Warmage better and more versatile at the one thing he was supposed to be good at -- blasting the crap out of things.  Which, as I explained above, is not generally considered optimal.  The only class features that are outright not a boost to being able to damage things are Pinpoint Bombardment (since it also helps battlefield control spells) and Covering Fire (which basically tacks on some battlefield control to any area spell he casts), both of which only benefit area attacks, so to use them, you're already forfeiting the superior strategy of focus fire.  So, hopefully doing these things will not make the Warmage overpowered, but simply able to compete with Barbarians, Sorcerers, and Evokers for damage dealing.That's my reasoning.I'm actually wondering if I should give them more class features.  The ability to spend one burst point to spontaneously cast ANY evocation spell on the sorc/wiz list with an appropriate level slot seems like a cool idea.  That way, they have a means other than Advanced Learning to snag useful Evocation spells from Spell Compendium and other splat books if needed.And of course, making an "Extra Burst" feat for +4 points/day is probably worthwhile.</blockquote>

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