Warmage...too weak? (Survivability)

[NightCrawler]

Let me describe you something that happened when we played in a session with a warmage on our party...
Warmage and monk goes into arena and face a construct... The construct is immune to spells or something like that... Normally they would have a big problem but the warmage started firing orbs of fire/cold etc at the construct (orbs have no SR) until he killed it!! If a mage was there instead of warmage he should have prepaired all of his available slots for making orb spells... But who does such thing? The ability to not prepare spells ahead of time is great... In most other cases they make nearly the same dmg but the mage offers superb versetile...

 

[Thurbane]

I find it interesting that most of the criticism of the warmage involves "theoretical" objections, while the people who are actually playing them think they're pretty much fine.

True - I guess my best bet is just to play one and see how it goes. I'm guessing Combat Expertise would be a good feat to help with AC? What other feats should I keep in mind?

 

[Legildur]

True - I guess my best bet is just to play one and see how it goes. I'm guessing Combat Expertise would be a good feat to help with AC? What other feats should I keep in mind?

The best defense is a good offense.

 

[drothgery]

True - I guess my best bet is just to play one and see how it goes. I'm guessing Combat Expertise would be a good feat to help with AC? What other feats should I keep in mind?

If the AC you can manage with armor + shield + ring of protection + amulet of natural armor isn't good enough, Combat Expertise won't help enough to matter. Your AC should be fine until you start running into opponents with attack bonuses so high that no PC's AC (short of all-out defensive builds) would be good enough, and then you run into difficulties because you need the cloak of charisma, which means you can't wear a cloak of displacement (though the Magic Item Compendium will let you get a cloak of charisma and displacement).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

True - I guess my best bet is just to play one and see how it goes. I'm guessing Combat Expertise would be a good feat to help with AC? What other feats should I keep in mind?

Don't you have to make a melee attack to use Combat Expertise?

Or were you planning on doing lots of touch spells, right in the thick of combat?

 

[Kat']

Don't you have to make a melee attack to use Combat Expertise?

Yes you do, and the bonus/malus is limited by your BAB. Not a very good choice for a low BAB class. I'd suggest Shield Specialization + Shield Ward.

 

[Thurbane]

Don't you have to make a melee attack to use Combat Expertise?

Or were you planning on doing lots of touch spells, right in the thick of combat?

Ah, I wasn't aware of that, I thought you could just take the bonus to AC and penalty to hit without attacking.

 

[Legildur]

Ah, I wasn't aware of that, I thought you could just take the bonus to AC and penalty to hit without attacking.

Well yes, I guess you can, but that still takes a Standard Action to do so. Meaning you won't be casting any spells in any round you are making use of Combat Expertise (or Fighting Defensively or Total Defense).

 

[JRR_Talking]

does the edge damage get doubled on a crit?

happened in last nights game when the bard3/warmage3 rolled a 20 and confirmed with an orb of acid on a troll, within PBS range

as he has practised spellcaster we assumed it did 6d8 (level x2) +2 for PBS + 6 for edge (2 x INT 16)? was that correct?
I managed to catch two of the trolls with my favoured soul doing energy vortex-acid, so it was jolly all round and our party of APL 6 killed 3 trolls and 4 classed-orcs in 2.5 rounds.
Combats do go quick.

john

 

[Kat']

as he has practised spellcaster we assumed it did 6d8 (level x2) +2 for PBS + 6 for edge (2 x INT 16)? was that correct?

Yup.