Warmage...too weak? (Survivability)

[cignus_pfaccari]

The warmage should never, EVER be the primary arcane caster in a group. If a situation develops where this is the case, someone needs to jump in a pit of spectres and reroll.

As a damage machine, the warmage is perfectly fine. You've got blasty spells and area control; everyone always forgets the area control spells. It suffers from having few in-class skills and few skill points, but so does everything else in the game. OTOH, its limited spell list is actually a blessing in disguise, as you're freed even from the burden of choosing which spells to learn, except those you get from Advanced Learning.

Also, there are a plethora of prestige classes that support it very nicely. The ones I recall here at work are War Wizard of Cormyr and Arcane Disciple, from PGtF, and there are some good ones in the Complete series as well.

I played one in an al-Qadim game, and it was great fun. I don't ordinarily play casters, because I hate choosing spells, but this was fast, furious, and fun.

Brad

 

[wayne62682]

As a house rule, perhaps they could be allowed to take non-evocation spells with their "learn another evocation spell" ability?

There's actually an alternate class ability in PHBII that allows this: Eclectic Learning. Unfortunately, a spell you learn with it counts as being one level higher than it really is, which really, really, really sucks.

 

[JRR_Talking]

Hi Kat'

bad hacking up of my post, plus i missed a few words of here and there so it read poorly.....

-with a high int you can A GOOD FEW knowledge skills (incluidng putting points in cross class ones), so pretty good c.f to a sorceror

teleport is 5th level spell. D&D collapses as a game around this level so no interest in playing these levels.

combat still last 5 rounds max, it just feels with all the adding up it last 5 days.

"U can have a wide range of defensive spells ". You split this one real bad!! A character (any spell user!) may have lots defensive spells, you just never get to cast them as combat last 5 rounds or less!!

A few spells with no need to hit roll, OR SpRes OR Saves....so all good

No Battle Sorcerors in LG

Despite this, everyone is probably right and will likely get 'tired to play' quite early.

John

 

[JRR_Talking]

human 1st level, could take spell focus conjuration and then cloudy conjuration from complete mage.....thats pretty good
OR
piercing evocation looks ok at low levels.....burning hands, shocking graps et al first ten point damage is untyped there no immunity to it? Burning hands on a small fire elemental would be a bit of a shock to it!!

John

 

[Drowbane]

The War Mage shouldn't be viewed as a Spellcaster, he is just a glassjaw Fighter who uses the an incredibly versitile weapon.

Battle Sorc sucks, I'd take a normal Sorc over that PoS class anyday.

Of course, all three of the above mentioned classes wishes it was a Psion.

 

[Nail]

I've never actually played a Warmage, so I'm wondering if someone with more experience could answer a question for me.

In my game, one of the players has a Warmage. He started it at 4th, and is now 9th level. He's going for the Elemental Savant PrC.

Does a Warmage suffer from having hardly any defensive spells on his list?

Not really...so long as he acts a s a team member, rather than a one-man hit squad. Our warmage does a reasonable job avoiding the center of combat, and sticking to ranged attacks. And the rest of the party does a good job keeping meat shields between the warmage and the bad guys.

There are plenty of times the Warmage wished he had a more utilitarian spell list. But that's a class feature, not a bug. Besides: "What problem can't be solved with an empowered Scorching Ray?"

 

[drothgery]

I'm currently playing a warmage 17 (originally built at 13th level), mostly because my character died and I wanted to minimize paperwork in building a high-level character. Observations on it...

1 - The Eclectic Learning alternate class feature from the PHB2 is your friend. Use it to pick up a few of the utilty spells that you're missing; it's much more useful than the Advanced Learning it replaces, because any useful evokations you've got already. Hence my warmage has greater teleport and dispel magic available. Until he picked up Greater Teleport, it was pretty handy that the Cleric could wind walk, and the fighter/barbarian had a helm of teleportation.

2 - If you don't have a good AC with a warmage, you're not spending your money wisely. You can wear armor and carry a shield for cheap AC; it's not like you're going to run out of spells past extreme low levels, so you can keep a free hand even with a shield. And with stacks of handy ray spells, you certainly ought to have invested in good Dex. Granted, a 30-something AC still isn't good enough against things that attack you at 17th level, but my warmage has the highest AC in the party (others are a fighter/barbarian, a soulknife, and a VoP cleric). The big problem is that since you need the cloak spot for charisma-boosting, you can't use it for a cloak of displacement. What I did -- and I think it makes a lot of sense -- was to spend almost all of my magic item budget on defense; my PC wears +5 armor, carries a +5 shield, and wears a vest of resistance +5.

3 - A lot of your blast spells are conjurations. This is very important to remember, as they typically have SR [none].

4 - Extra Edge + relatively high int = effectively an extra die of damage on every spell

5 - Do everything you can to talk other casters (especially ones that prepare spells) to concentrate on anything but blasting spells.

 

[wolfpunk]

My 6th level kobold war mage is my all time favorite character, his 6 wisdom made him prone to make foolish maneuvers that would provoke attacks of opportunity, but at the same time his ability to deal out a large amount of damage at range was tons of fun. He was useful, had lots of great comedic role playing moments and died in a blaze of glory, literally.

I think the warmage is more about WANTING to play a blaster. If you want to deal a lot of damage get yourself a staff that matches your style of play, have a couple of back up wands and go for it.

If you are really worried, you could take one level of sorcerer and one level of cleric to really open up your choices for your staff, wand and scroll collection.

 

[rgard]

Battle Sorc sucks, I'd take a normal Sorc over that PoS class anyday.

Drowbane, don't hold back, tell us what you really think!

 

[gnfnrf]

In play, my main experience with a warmage actually felt a little overpowered.

It was the second half of a Red Hand of Doom game, and the warmage in the party could drop on CR dragons with orbs incredibly quickly, and clear huge blocks of lesser foes.

The advantage of the warmage is the sheer flexibility of damage dealing. At any time, you have access to all five orbs, fireball or lightning bolt, and so forth. As a sorc or wizard, even good spell selection can still be trumped by an unexpected encounter, but the warmage is always equipped to deal with changing circumstances.

My problem with warmage, aside from slight balance issues with Sudden Maximized Orbs of Force, is that it is virtually impossible to distinguish warmages from each other. The character design just doesn't include any real choices other than feats and equipment, and that's not enough to make characters that seem very different most of the time.

--
gnfnrf