Warmage - how balanced?

[Kunimatyu]

Like Felon said, a warmage is a blessing to the DM. You don't have to worry about the wizard trapping your guys in a solid fog, turning them into rabbits with baleful polymorph, dropping their Strength to 1 with split empowered rays of enfeeblement, flying while improved invisible, dominating your main villain and making him serve the party, etc etc.

It's just damage. Even the no-SR, all-energy-types damage like the orbs are all generally close range, so the warmage risks getting seriously clobbered if he tries them. Also, he can't Dimension Door out of a grapple like a wizard can.

In short, no, the Warmage is the farthest thing from broken.

I still like them(and Dread Necromancers), though, because they can do one thing that Wizards and Sorcerors can't, namely, use a comprehensive(but limited) list of spells to solve problems. Once you've been playing D&D for a while, sometimes it's fun to use a wide array of subpar tactics to overcome problems -- for example, a Warmage always has a gust of wind ready in case of cloudkill. You'll get the chance to use a lot of fun but not broken stuff, and pull out really weird spells just in time to save the party's bacon.

 

[Felon]

The overall consensus seems to be "Yes, the warmage is very powerful, but only due to his overspecialization in one area. But outside of the direct damage, he's utterly worthless."

It's pretty much the answer I expected, but I was hoping there was something I was missing.

It's a matter of perspective. Big direct damage is something that a DM should be able to mitigate without much hassle. Forget trying to neutralize the warmage with SR and energy immunity, ust add more HP to the mix. The bad guys will live a little longer and the warmage won't even mind it (in moderation). Just more stuff to blow up.

Figuring out how to deal with the web wand, that's a much bigger nut to crack.

Maybe soon I shall place an anti-warmage-warmage into the mix. All he does is ready actions to counterspell. That could be fun

Fun for whom? You or the warmage?

I'm beginning to have some doubts about you, BBR. :\ The meat-shield-and-nuker tactics that you're objecting to aren't all that objectionable, and your proposed solutions seem to entail not just compensating for the warmage's damage output, but rather sidelining him altogether.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

Fun for whom? You or the warmage?

I'm beginning to have some doubts about you, BBR. :\ The meat-shield-and-nuker tactics that you're objecting to aren't all that objectionable, and your proposed solutions seem to entail not just compensating for the warmage's damage output, but rather sidelining him altogether.

Forcing a party to think in new and different ways is a bad idea? Preventing them from doing the same thing over and over and over is a bad idea? What happens when they continue with the same tactics and consider it a cure-all, until the last fight where the set up changes and their cure-all solution does not work but it's too late?

The anti-warmage-warmage would be a rarity, put there simply to force them to have backup plans in case things don't go as expected.

 

[Felon]

Forcing a party to think in new and different ways is a bad idea? Preventing them from doing the same thing over and over and over is a bad idea?

You have a reasonable goal, and I've suggested some means for achieving it. It just doesn't need to be heavy-handed. Challenge the warmage, don't sideline him.

 

[Victim]

Oh, I like warmages fine, having played one on a couple of occasions. I will say that there's a lot that could be fixed. The 3rd-level Advanced Learning is rather worthless since 1st-level evocation spells suck pretty hard, even if you have Spell Compendium access. And they only get three more Advanced Learnings throughout their career, so they miss out on a lot of new spells that could make them a much better blaster.

Also, warmages have very little range at lower levels. Most of those spells are close (25 feet + 5 feet/2 levels) or point-blank.

Good catch on the EBT. Missed that.

Yeah, the way advanced learning are timed seems to be designed to make warmages hate the designers.

The overall consensus seems to be "Yes, the warmage is very powerful, but only due to his overspecialization in one area. But outside of the direct damage, he's utterly worthless."

It's pretty much the answer I expected, but I was hoping there was something I was missing.

I guess it's a matter of how you define very powerful. I see the warmages as having great access to attack spells since they have spontaneous access from a large number of (similar) spells. And their blasts are a little bit better than a wizard or sorcerers. But only a little bit. A warmage standing in back throwing blasts isn't really going to be doing much better than a sorcerer until his greater ability to change up energy types and shapes comes into play. Something like a psion or wilder is actually a far nastier blaster than a warmage since they can get easier access to bonus damage and have some nasty combo attacks based on their action manipulation powers. They just have to pay through the nose to maintain high effect powers.

And if the fighter dropped, wouldn't the entire party's tactics have to adjust as well? I don't see how the party adjusting their tactics to fit the situation and their abilities is a bad thing. If you had a more killy fighter type and a more buffing sort of caster, the default tactic might just as easily be buff the fighter up and let him kill the monsters. I kind of wonder what kind of situation makes having the fighter just play D so viable though. You just use some more mobile enemies (less obstructing terrain) to loosen up the battlelines.

 

[Crothian]

Eh, your core casting stat is Charisma yet for some odd reason you don't get enough skill points or Charisma skills to be a really good face.

Not an odd reason, the class isn't a face class. Just because a class has a way to use charisma doesn't mean they need to be social classes. They named it warmage for a reason.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I would definitely come up with situations that require finesse or non-blasting solutions to challenge the party, not "and here's an NPC that makes your PC useless" NPCs. That's crude and, frankly, the kind of thing that would make that player not want to play with you any more.

 

[Fishbone]

Anything with a ton of HP makes a Warmage cry in his beer, and if they like to spend times in groups or are a "mated pair" so much the better. 4 CR 6s or 2 CR 8s is going to be a lot harder on a Warmage than 1 CR 10. More targets to hit, more HP, too. And tanking isn't so much of an option. Sure, he can fend off 1 or 2 guys but 4 or 5?
This way of thinking is better than building one uber NPC or beastie meant to pimp slap a PC down. It also won't be such a "vendetta" thing. DMs, sometimes its fun to you know, let the players excel. If they get the vibe that you're going out of the way to punish them in contrived ways for doing their jobs they will take it out on you.

 

[Bagpuss]

Most play, comes somewhere in-between these extremes, where the warmage is good in combats but not so great out dancing amongst the nobility of the land.

Yeah with 2 skill points a level a sorcerer and the wizard aren't that great either it's not like they have points free to dump into diplomacy and Knowledge (Heraldry).

I don't like them myself previously if you wanted arcane versatility you went wizard if you wanted to blast things lots you went a sorcerer. Now their doesn't seem a point to taking a sorcerer. Sure your sorcerer can take invisibility or fly but they have so few spells known, you can bet a sizeable number use to be used for blasting, which means they don't have the versatility of a wizard nor the combat ability of the Warmage (who gets armour and better hit points as well).

This class and the other arcane specialists (Beguiler for example) effectively make the sorcerer a redundant class, or at least significantly weaker in most campaigns.

 

[Bagpuss]

Anything with a ton of HP makes a Warmage cry in his beer

Yeah, unless they die to Phantasmal Killer (4th), get blind by Prismatic Ray (5th) or Disintegrate (6th), etc. etc. They have plenty Save or Die spells and can cast them more often than a wizard so that it's more likely that the enemy will fail a save.

4 CR 6s or 2 CR 8s is going to be a lot harder on a Warmage than 1 CR 10. More targets to hit, more HP, too.

Lucky they get so many Area of Effect attacks so they can damage all the enemies at once.