Post/Author/DateTime	Post
gregm 03-27-05, 06:52 AM	(Just realize I had the wrong board before) Choice from Spellsword, Rage Mage and Bladesinger. These all look like quite nifty classes apart fro the 5/10 caster progression. My question is: has anyone played any of these prestige classes all the way through the 10 levels?? How effective are they? What build did you use? Has anyone got any advice for making a character like this? I like the look of all 3 and am interested in using one if my current wizard (straight) dies (no more straight fighting guys for me, i've done that too much). So what advice can anyone give me?
Sang-Drax 03-27-05, 08:23 AM	Well, for an optimized "Gish" (that is, an arcane warrior), I highly recommend you to search for the Character Build Spotlight: Gish thread... don't have the link with me, sorry. If you're lucky, the search function will be working. Anyway, taking full 10 levels of any of these is hardly the best option. If any, Spellsword 10 is almost worth it. Rage Mage and Bladesinger suck really really hard. I know there are some defenders of the Bladesinger class in these boards, but it's just not worth it. Your damage will suck because you use only a one-handed weapon, your spells will suck because your caster level is so low, and, in the end, you're a fighter/wizard that can neither fight nor cast spells. The most common and efficient Gishes are: - Fighter 2/Wizard 4/Spellsword 5/Eldritch Knight 9 for a spellcasting warrior. You'll get 8th level spells, BAB +18, Channel Spell, and ignore Arcane Spell Failure -20% (meaning you can cast spells while in mithril twilight armor) - Fighter 1/Wizard 6/Spellsword 1/Eldritch Knight 10/Any Wiz PrC 2 for a spellcaster that can handle melee if necessary. BAB +16, Caster Level 18th (meaning you'll get 9th level spells by 19th level). There are plenty more PrCs around if you use other books like Forgotten Realms or DragonLance. For further details, refer to the thread I've mentioned. Hope I've helped!
Eidolon Faer 03-27-05, 09:38 AM	1. Rage Mage is never EVER worthwhile. Ever. The Cleric BAB and half-caster progression combine to make the class utterly useless, and there's no payoff for Spell Rage. The only even mildly interesting ability is Warrior Cry at level 10, and it seems kinda pointless to take a Prestige class that sucks for 10 levels just so you can be as effective as a straight Barbarian for 5 minutes per day... 2. Spellsword and Bladesinger both offer a full BAB progression and half spellcasting. This is already better than the Rage Mage. As for Spellsword, the Channel Spells ability is distinctly overrated IMO. Spellsword is most-commonly used as a one or three level dip to gain the ability to wear armor without Arcane Spell Failure. Don't bother taking the full 10 levels though. At MOST take three levels and then move into Eldritch Knight from the DMG. Bladesinger...is a bit more complicated. It also gives the ability to wear light armor without ASF, but only as long as you're using the prescribed weapons. And the ability to add your Int bonus to your AC can be exceptionally friendly to a Wizard-based Gish. Between Combat Expertise, Int, Dex, Enchanted Elven Chainmail, misc. magic items, a shield spell, etc... you can attain quite astounding defensive abilities. As for offense, however, our previous poster has something of a point. You'll be using a rapier, you won't be Two-Weapon fighting or sneak attacking for huge bonus dice, and your relatively smaller spell selection will be divided between buffs, defensive spells, and offense. And your strength is likely to be your third or fourth stat priority at best. At higher levels, the Bladesinger gets an extra attack ability, however, which offsets the problem to some extent. Furthermore, most optimized Bladesinger builds include Swashbuckler 3 to allow adding Int to damage. Since you've got such a huge incentive to rack up a monster Int score, your offensive spells will generally have decent save DC's as well. The Elf Wizard substitution level 1 from Races of the Wild, and the Elf Paragon class from Unearthed Arcana provide attractive paths to enter the PrC as well.
Velderan 03-27-05, 06:11 PM	I can't really comment on the others, but I think a bladesinger can be fairly effective, given the opportunity. Not the best build in the game, but effective. (If you can't tell from my signature, its my favorite PRC, but that's from a roleplaying perspective). I've done builds for this in the past, but I dont remember them all (and I don't have my books handy), so here are a few tricks I remember. -If you want to play a rapier build, you can couple it with the swashbuckler base class so you can add into to damage as well as AC -As with any GISH (where did this term come from?), you have to use the Arcane Strike feat from Complete Warrior. -There's a feat from Complete Arcane that will let you wear medium armor (since you can cast in light unimpeded), and Mithral plate is effectively considered medium, so you can basically wear plate unimpeded. -If you have high dexterity, you can always stack it with levels in champion of larethion (races of the wild), so you can augment damage with elegant strike. (mind you, this is all based on wanting to play a bladesinger specifically as opposed to min/maxing, and I'm not the greatest min/maxer on this forum, but a bladesinger can be an adequate party member)
Sang-Drax 03-27-05, 06:23 PM	As far as I remember, Bladesinger's abilities are tied to the use of light or no armor. A mithril full plate is medium armor and would thus negates all Bladesinger abilities. Am I nor correct? Taking Champion Of Corellon Larethian means more wasted Caster Levels, but then, yes, that might take you somewhere. Even though you'll be a spoof of a caster, you might be decent in melee. No merits to the Bladesinger on this one, but to CoCL, which pumps up damage output so much that even a non-flanking Rogue 18/Champion Of Corellon 2 is a serious threat. Bladesinger is, hands down, the second worst Gish PrC available (I concede on this one, the worst is, by far, the Rage Mage). I really miss the old 2e Bladesinger... hell, even the MoF Bladesinger was somewhat nice to play with (despite the most useless Still Spell requirement).
Cold Napalm 03-28-05, 01:47 AM	Spell channel is not over rated...it's under rated because people don't realize a broken engine when they see one it seem. 1) spell channel is a SP...i.e. no component. This means you can spell channel stoneskin with no cost and then bop yourself or an ally for the effect. 2) ONLY the target hit is affect by spell effect...this makes defenstrating sphere, fog spells and various other spells REALLY deadly.
gregm 03-28-05, 05:20 AM	How are such spells made really deadly? And what spells are good to use with Channel spell?
Kessalin Talira 03-28-05, 05:39 AM	As with any GISH (where did this term come from?)From the "Knights of the Lich-Queen" campaign in Polyhedron 59/Dungeon 100. Polyhedron page 27, specifically. It refers to the "Skilled" caste of the Githyanki, made up almost exclusively of warrior/casters. Regarding the Prestige Classes, of the three I would play a Spellsword first, and a Rage Mage second. That's only because I detest the Complete Warrior Bladesinger. If at all possible, look over and give serious consideration to the Races of Faerun Bladesinger.
Talen Lee 03-28-05, 06:48 AM	The Bladesinger is best used with a particular style of combatant. Let's see what I can glean on a read-through (as a popular class, and an old 3.0 warhorse, it didn't appear to obviously and irrevocably suck, so we can at least give it a glance). Seems the AC issue isn't too huge. An 'empty-off-hand' doesn't prevent the use of a buckler, light armours aren't that stifling. The Int bonus to AC is nice, but not amazing. It should be taken as such. This class really does look like one in which it's best to take an odd-level dip into, then bail from. I can see one going to level 6 or 7 at best, but 10th level doesn't give you enough. Song of Fury isn't that impressive. However, 6 or 7 may be enough - it loses 3 levels of spellcasting at 7, which isn't too detrimental, since you've lost very little of your BAB. Now, going to 10 would require the Epic Bladedancer to be something of its former glory. As far as a 'recommended build' goes? Back in 3.0 (You know, I'm beginning to wonder if I say that too often), it involved a dip into Assassin, for broken goodies and int-based casting along with sneak attack. No such luck today, however! No, the simplest and best build is probably something along the lines of Elven Runecaster 7, Blade Dancer 7, with the last six levels something like Eldritch Knight. Though, really, that may be just the Runecaster being nuts.
Velderan 03-30-05, 03:37 PM	As far as I remember, Bladesinger's abilities are tied to the use of light or no armor. A mithril full plate is medium armor and would thus negates all Bladesinger abilities. Am I nor correct? Spell requirement). No, ordinarily you'd be correct. But, because the bladesinger class allows you to ignore spell failure for light armor, you can apply the Battle Caster feat from complete Arcane, which will then extend this ability to medium armor.
Ander Spectacular 03-30-05, 04:00 PM	The Rage Mage is perhaps the most underrated gish class out there. It is underrated for many good reasons. One of the redeeming factors of the Rage Mage, though(and there are many), is the spell fury ability. This gives one free quicken of a 4th level or lower spell per rage. This is better than the Bladesinger ability(which is once per day), as well as a few other classes that grant the same ability. As far as i know, the Rage Mage is the only one that gets to use this ability more than once(3 times at 10th). This is really useful to a gish character, because it permits something like a Shock Trooper full BAB charge(Tenser's Transformation+full casting), plus a nice follow up quickened spell. Virtually all classes can be built to be nasty, but there will always be some that are the best at what they do. Maybe a Warmage4/Barbarian1/Fighter2/Rage Mage10/Bear Warrior 3 would be a nice implementation of the Rage Mage. Take Natural Spell(with a generous DM, the Bear Warrior ability could be considered a version of Wild Shape), then rage and cast while in black bear shape. You can't quite get brown bear shape, but the bonuses from the black bear are pretty decent. Add in some Sudden Metamagic, and you can really lay down the hurting. Sure you can only do it a limited number of times per day, but it would be a fun, functional build. There is a way to optimize this class just like there is for every class. There might not be a way to make this the "best", but it can be optimized in its own right. -AS-
OGS-Remix 03-30-05, 05:31 PM	I was thinking about this and if you used a Spellthief/Bladesinger you can do ok. The Bladesinger levels give you better BAB, more HP and better saving throws which is offset by a cap on your Spellthief abilities. I think it is an acceptable compromise, because you still rely primarily on the Spellthief's abilities to steal spells/spell effects but you have a little better combat ability/survivability to get the job done. The problem is Spellthief spells are Cha based while Bladesinger AC bonus is Int based, so you need a good set of stats if you really want to make it work. It's very difficult to make a truly optimized gish character, just because of the way the system is setup.