Gish base class

[Bigode]

Hey, guys, it looks like some other people here (namely, Aktariel and Captain Bleach) share my interest in a D&D lower-powered than the Tomes (at a lower balance level than that of the monsters), but with physical classes that do matter. So, just as the brute, I'm posting this class, that I'd like to see balanced against a rogue or ranger. Anyone interested? BTW, that:

For the Fighter/Mage to work, we'd really have to hand out Eldritch Knight as a Base Class, and honestly I don't think people are ready for that. Sure, you can hold up the fact that having a level appropriate BAB doesn't mean much of anything, but it's just not going to phase people. I'm sorry, but that kind of character pretty much has to be solved with the introduction of new martial classes like the Duskblade, only presumably with less slashing dispel and more spells that people actually care about like shatter and levitate.

... somewhat sums my feelings - I do know K's point, but, in my case, I don't want the game balanced against spellcasters (including the monsters who are awesome by being so), so that thing here works seen against some of the weaker classes that are still interesting.

GISH
Hit Die: d8.
BAB: High.
Fortitude, Reflexes: Average.
Will: Good.
Spells per Day: as Duskblade, except for the 1st-level spells column, which is delayed by 1 level.

Class Skills
The gish’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Balance (Dex), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Decipher Script (Int), Jump (Str), Knowledge (all skills, taken individually) (Int), Profession (Wis), Ride (Dex), Spellcraft (Int), Swim (Str), and Tumble (Dex). See Chapter 4: Skills for skill descriptions.
Skill Points at 1st Level: (2 + Int modifier) x4.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 2 + Int modifier.

Class Features
All of the following are class features of the gish.
Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A gish is proficient with all simple and martial weapons and with all armor (heavy, medium, and light) and shields (except tower shields).
Spells: as duskblade.
Spells Known: as duskblade.
Quick Cast: Beginning at 1st level, a gish can cast one spell each day as a swift action, so long as the casting time of the spell is 1 standard action or less.
A gish gains an extra use of this ability at 3rd level and every two levels thereafter.
Bonus Feats: At 2nd level, a gish gets a bonus feat in addition to the feat that any 1st-level character gets and the bonus feat granted to a human character. The gish gains an additional bonus feat at 6th level and every four gish levels thereafter (10th, 14th, and 18th). These bonus feats must be fighter bonus feats or reserve feats. A gish must still meet all prerequisites for a bonus feat.
These bonus feats are in addition to the feat that a character of any class gets from advancing levels. A gish is not limited to the categories of combat, reserve, or battlecast feats when choosing these feats.
Spell Power (Ex): Starting at 4th level, a gish can more easily overcome the resistance of any opponent he successfully injures with a weapon attack. If a gish has dealt damage to an opponent with a weapon attack, he gains a +1 bonus on his caster level check to overcome that opponent's spell resistance, and to saving throw DCs for spells cast against that opponent, for the remainder of the encounter. This bonus increases to +2 at 8th level, to +3 at 12th level, to +4 at 16th level, and to +5 at 20th level.

Gish Spell List
0: acid splash, dancing lights, daze, detect magic, flare, ghost sound, guidance, know direction, light, mage hand, ray of frost, resistance, touch of fatigue, virtue
1: animate rope, bane, burning hands, cause fear, chill touch, color spray, deathwatch, divine favor, doom, endure elements, enlarge person, entangle, entropic shield, expeditious retreat, faerie fire, feather fall, grease, jump, longstrider, mage armor, magic missile, magic weapon, mount, obscuring mist, ray of enfeeblement, reduce person, shield, shield of faith, shocking grasp, silent image, true strike, ventriloquism
2: acid arrow, aid, barkskin, bear's endurance, blindness/deafness, blur, bull's strength, cat's grace, chill metal, darkness, darkvision, daze monster, death knell, false life, flame blade, flaming sphere, fog cloud, fox's cunning, ghoul touch, glitterdust, gust of wind, heat metal, heroism, hideous laughter, hypnotic pattern, invisibility, levitate, minor image, mirror image, misdirection, obscure object, produce flame, protection from arrows, pyrotechnics, resist energy, scare, scorching ray, shatter, silence, sound burst, spider climb, touch of idiocy, web, wind wall
3: animate dead, arcane sight, bestow curse, blink, clairaudience/clairvoyance, contagion, daylight, deeper darkness, dispel magic, displacement, fear, fireball, flame arrow, fly, greater magic weapon, haste, hold person, invisibility purge, keen edge, lightning bolt, magic vestment, major image, phantom steed, protection from energy, ray of exhaustion, see invisibility, sleet storm, slow, vampiric touch, water breathing, water walk
4: air walk, arcane eye, black tentacles, blight, cone of cold, confusion, control water, control winds, crushing despair, death ward, dimension door, enervation, fire shield, freedom of movement, hallucinatory terrain, ice storm, illusory wall, interposing hand, greater invisibility, nondetection, poison, resilient sphere, rusting grasp, shout, solid fog, stoneskin, wall of fire, wall of ice, waves of fatigue
5: acid fog, baleful polymorph, blade barrier, chain lightning, control weather, create undead, delayed blast fireball, disintegrate, feeblemind, forceful hand, freezing sphere, greater dispel magic, greater heroism, greater shout, hold monster, mind fog, mirage arcana, mislead, move earth, persistent image, polar ray, repulsion, righteous might, spell resistance, telekinesis, wall of iron, wall of stone, waves of exhaustion

[shirak]

There already is a gish base class. It's called "Cleric"

[MrWaeseL]

Don't base things on the Duskblade. That just leads to broken dreams and crying orphans.
Also, for a fighter/spellcaster the abilities sure don't synergize well. There aren't any spells on the list the Gish can use to buff himself. I mean seriously. Look up that bit about how the sorcerer can outfight the fighter (using fists of stone, wraithstrike, etc etc, I can find it right now) to get some idea about how spellcasting and fighting could synergize. (And no, I don't think "making a full-round attack and then dropping a Fireball" is synergy)

[Catharz]

The point isn't to be as powerful as a cleric, and it isn't to behave like a cleric either.

A "gish" is a warrior with the flexibility to use spells or sword for offense based on which is more useful at the moment.

The problem with D&D is that the answer is always that spells are more useful, unless you've buffed the hell out of yourself.


Anyway, here's a suggestion: Spell power should probably apply to saves as well as spells, as this guy will be suffering from some serious MAD. Also, he doesn't really have any normal combat ability. He's just a heavily armored guy who does battlefield control and snipes with ranged touch attacks.

If you want to have the gish swinging a sword as anything but a last resort, you'll either have to give some long duration buffs (which you'll assume are always up, and which may overshadow the combat spell casting), or you'll have to give some class abilities to enhance melee combat (such as bonus fighter feats).

[Username17]

What kind of opposition are you expecting to face? If the answer is "Dragons, Demons, Aberrations, and Magical Beasts" - then you can't get by without the raw power that a Wizard brings to the table. Heck, if the answer is "Giants, Vermin, and Dire Beasts" then you pretty much can't get by in melee at all unless you're doing it at the level of a pounce rogue or a Tome Barbarian.

A Longsword is a level-appropriate attack at 1st level and with some tweaking you can keep it competitive at 2nd level. After that your basic knuckle-dragging opponent is an Ogre - and you're just not going to go through those 29 hit points in a reasonable amount of time with a d8 + X. The damn thing is +8 to-hit and does 2d8+7 (approximately two Longsword hits per attack).

So if you aren't getting some ability that makes your Longsword awesome by level 3, it isn't worth anything. You can go int melee with the expected basic opposition, and you will lose. And when you think about it, that's really not different from the melee potential of the core Monk or even the Wizard. The ability to stand in melee and not win is the perogative of every single chaarcter reagrdless of equipment or class features.

---

But let's start talking specifics:

Armored Mage (Ex): Normally, armor of any type interferes with an arcane spellcaster's gestures, which can cause spells to fail if those spells have a somatic component. A gish's limited focus and specialized training, however, allow him to avoid arcane spell failure as long as he sticks to light armor and light shields. This training does not extend to medium or heavy armors, nor to heavy shields. This ability does not apply to spells gained from a different spellcasting class. In addition, the gish may make the gestures required by spells with somatic components with a hand holding a weapon.

Are you fvcking kidding me? Their first level ability is "can't cast spells in medium armor or while using a decent shield" - blow that!

Look, Arcane Spell Failure is a disadvantage that is applied to characters to prevent them from using decent armor. Ignoring Arcane Spell Failure under some circumstances is not an abilty. It's still a disadvantage, it just happens to be smaller than the disadvantage that actual wizards get. This is like if you wrote up a character class with a code of conduct and the only power you gave them was to ignore their code of conduct under some limited set of circumstances. The default is that you don't have such a limitation, so when you're saddled with that limitation you don't have to feel grateful if it's less severe than it could have been.

Clerics don't have arcane spell failure. They wear heavy armor and are full casters with good spells.

---

Basically what you've got is a character who can't fight in melee (because his AC sucks and he doesn't have any ability to keep up on the expected sword damage); and has limited spellcasting. What's the point? What is he supposed to fight that won't just swat him away?

-Username17

[Iaimeki]

"Hey, guys, it looks like some other people here (namely, Aktariel and Captain Bleach) share my interest in a D&D lower-powered than the Tomes (at a lower balance level than that of the monsters)"

The question, I think, is: what do you use for opposition in those circumstances?

[cthulhu]

If you go back to Races of war I think, frank neatly divides monsters up into 4 types:

# Characters: This is the “as a character” philosophy, which makes monsters at a certain CR where they are perfectly suited to fight parties of characters at that level, but might overpower a weaker party or single character or be a total pushover to more powerful individuals or parties. Giants, gnolls, yuanti, goblinoids and other monsters who are expect to use PC-level tactics and equipment fall into this category.

# Glass Jaws and Sucker Punches AKA Suckers: These monsters, which we’ll just call “Suckers” for their ability to suck and sucker punch. Usually they have an extremely powerful attack that can sucker punch a party, but they have some glaring weakness that means that they will go down extremely quickly if you exploit this weakness. Sprites, with their fabulously low HPs and powerful magic are a fine example of this monster. “Closet trolls” like trolls and Pouncing dire animals fall into this category because they are extremely dangerous in enclosed spaces (better than any three fighting characters of their CR), but they die easily if you can attack them at range and stay at a distance.

# Puzzle Monsters: These monsters are in fact more puzzle than monster. They usually are unbeatable unless you know their one weakness, meaning that players who don’t know the right Monster Manual by heart usually die to these things. Classic examples from old editions of DnD like the Windwalkers would only die to a single spell from the spell list which you may or may not know or have on hand, but 3.x has from eased away from this level of arbitrariness. Now we have monsters like Swarms and incorporeal monsters who may be immune to all your normal weapon attacks (a killer for a party without a damage-capable spellcaster) and several kind of plants or oozes that seem to have random and crazy defenses when you attack them (like splitting into more monsters).

# Awesome Because Its Awesome AKA Player Killers (PKs): Some Monsters are just built to make players cry. Dragons are the classic example, as they are traditionally CRed about two to four lower than they should be, and some other monsters have also been unofficially given the [awesome] subtype, meaning that players will always remember these monsters for being Party Killers. Angels, beholders, monsters with PC spellcasting, and drow typically fall into this category.

Basically, you want to pick the category 1 monsters. 2 & 3 are bad news if you kill spell casting, because the closet trolls can mangle any fighter in melee, and the puzzle monsters may require spells. item 4 will own you even harder than before because the overall power level goes down.

If you check out the sample monsters frank used in his example,

"Dragons, Demons, Aberrations, and Magical Beasts"

You've got lots of things in category 4, some in 3 and some in 2, while these

"Giants, Vermin, and Dire Beasts"

All hit things *really hard* and fall in category two.

But if the bad guys are all Drow built like PCs, it's not an issue what you do with the classes, because the bad guys are the same as you.

[Bigode]

For starters, both in the day when I posted this and yesterday, I had to leave where I was posting sooner than I thought (should've replied yesterday ...); what happened was that I forgot some edits I already knew I should've made before posting (this class went straight from the WotC boards (yes, I had people telling me it was too powerful, and I suppose they, unlike me, even use unmodified full spellcasters ...). Those were:

- it didn't make a lot of difference, but I should've said I know reserve feats are crap currently, and the mention of them was for now mostly a reminder of my interest in seeing decent ones;
- at WotC, it actually had a table - which I actually find unneeded, hence the absence here - but one thing it did show was that I had delayed the entire 1st-level spells column by 1 level (so that it starts at level 2);
- spell power was indeed meant to be edited to apply to saving throw DCs, so it was now;
- and armored mage should now allow for any armor/shield (the actual rule my games used was that ASF is SF and happens for nonproficiency - so single-classed archivists suffered it and gishes didn't need an actual class feature for avoiding it), and was removed (there's no ASF, period) in favor of an extra quick cast use (so, I was fvcking kidding myself, not you, Frank);

... so, anybody who called the previous versions of the above items dumb was absolutely right. On to the other replies.

There already is a gish base class. It's called "Cleric"

The point isn't to be as powerful as a cleric, and it isn't to behave like a cleric either.

Thanks, Catharz - the only thing I've to add is that I plan to have a medium BAB class focused on buffing and healing, which doesn't grab all party roles at once, and sure doesn't get all spells ever published, with spells up to 6th or 7th level (and class abilities at levels other than 1).

Don't base things on the Duskblade. That just leads to broken dreams and crying orphans.

I suppose you allude to the fact (unquestionable) that the duskblade (and this gish, to a not-much-lesser extent) is ridiculous compared to even the eldritch knight (which isn't even really trying), right? If so, there're 2 issues relevant: first, if the wizard itself gets weaker (it will), the knight gets too; second, me playing with an eldritch knight is what actually would make my party cry, and I myself don't like a)how mid- to high-level wizard play is a game of paranoia, contingencies and RLT (and they seep into the knight), and b)how an eldritch knight probably would still do better using just spells (and forgetting to have the PrC at all). Would you recommend some balance point between the duskblade and the eldritch knight, that has good reason to use weapons?

[all suggestions about buffing]

Yeah, I was more or less convinced that it wouldn't work without buff access; I'll make a list of additions as soon as I can. MrWaesel: did you mean you "can" or "can't" find the thread? If the latter, don't you remember a key I could use for searching it (typing "sorcerer", "fighter" and "outfight" in the bar probably won't help)?

If you want to have the gish swinging a sword as anything but a last resort, you'll either have to give some long duration buffs (which you'll assume are always up, and which may overshadow the combat spell casting), or you'll have to give some class abilities to enhance melee combat (such as bonus fighter feats).

As said, will gather buffs for the list, but the fighter feats were already there.

What kind of opposition are you expecting to face? If the answer is "Dragons, Demons, Aberrations, and Magical Beasts" - then you can't get by without the raw power that a Wizard brings to the table. Heck, if the answer is "Giants, Vermin, and Dire Beasts" then you pretty much can't get by in melee at all unless you're doing it at the level of a pounce rogue or a Tome Barbarian.

Most likely answer for me would be "demons, devils and aberrations". I looked some of those up and saw some the gish seemed (at a not-so-thorough glance, mind) able to take on now, others that I could imagine a buffed gish taking (so, that require the broadening of the spell list), and of course some that it has little chance against, but those last, AFAICT, are mostly crowded at levels where official D&D already stopped working. Now, don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't read your Tomes and found them awesome reads (and sources of ideas I will indeed use), but the option of mostly scaling things up wasn't for my taste - I'd just prefer to find a middle ground, and move some things up (duskblade) and others down (wizard), so, not all solutions the Tomes provide will be usable for me; therefore, I don't worry with the fact that this has no chance against a well-played balor, for example. But, for cases that seemed closer to my ideas, could you tell me how a nalfeshnee and a cornugon would go about fighting a duel and a fight against a party of four people (in both cases, each PC is of the same CR of the fiend)?

A Longsword is a level-appropriate attack at 1st level and with some tweaking you can keep it competitive at 2nd level. After that your basic knuckle-dragging opponent is an Ogre - and you're just not going to go through those 29 hit points in a reasonable amount of time with a d8 + X. The damn thing is +8 to-hit and does 2d8+7 (approximately two Longsword hits per attack).

So if you aren't getting some ability that makes your Longsword awesome by level 3, it isn't worth anything. You can go int melee with the expected basic opposition, and you will lose. And when you think about it, that's really not different from the melee potential of the core Monk or even the Wizard. The ability to stand in melee and not win is the perogative of every single character reagrdless of equipment or class features.

...

Basically what you've got is a character who can't fight in melee (because his AC sucks and he doesn't have any ability to keep up on the expected sword damage); and has limited spellcasting. What's the point? What is he supposed to fight that won't just swat him away?

OK, I have to collect other spells for buffing, and I acknowledge it may need even more help depending on one's ideas of fair fights, but, as for the ogre (and similarly purely-brute monsters), most likely answer is: I'm not meleeing it if I can help - first off, go Tumble (if needed); second, for me there's no character that "has a sword, and has a sword, and has a sword and won't use anything else nor ever consider the idea of not going into melee with anything" (as many seem to love, but I suppose you'd agree with me), so I'd just pick the bow (where I'd have at least quite a better to-hit, and using a bow instead of a sword doesn't make one any less of a full-BAB character); third, even supposing the yesterday version with just one daily quick cast at level 3, it'd be likely either grease or color spray (which, even in a party setting, would buy time for all characters, thus having a somewhat defensive role), hopefully followed by peppering. If you are interested on something closer to what I consider a dedicated meleer and how it'd take an ogre at level 3 in melee, see the brute - attempt just posted.

The question, I think, is: what do you use for opposition in those circumstances?

The Great Old One nailed it for me, especially with this:

But if the bad guys are all Drow built like PCs, it's not an issue what you do with the classes, because the bad guys are the same as you.

As for Aktariel and Bleach, you'd have to ask them.

[Aktariel]

I think I'm going to try playing TitanQuest style DnD.

Lots and lots and lots of low level monsters. The higher you go, the more you have to kill.

In all my games, there have been ow levels of puzzles and almost no combat maneuvers.... we're hack and slash people. Yes, I realize it's simple. But it's more about having fun, and this is what makes us happy.

As to magic, I'm disallowing anything with more powerful spells than paladins or rangers. [we're looking for that "oh shit! It's a spell" feeling, also kinda like TitanQuest, where if you can't hit things with sharp pointy objects at least part of the time, you get fvcked.]

Should be interesting.

[cthulhu]

To be honest, you can probably keep the same feel while using RoW classes. If I was you, I'd consider doing that, because wading your way through a huge horde of ogres is way more fun than killing a bunch of orcs.

[MrWaeseL]

Titan quest is awesome, and a refreshing take on the fantasy genre. Everyone should play it (but the expansion sucks).

[Catharz]

1186103722[/unixtime]]we're looking for that "oh shit! It's a spell" feeling

"Oh shit! It's a ranger spell! Maybe he'll speak to my horse!"

[Manxome]

1186133446[/unixtime]]Titan quest is awesome, and a refreshing take on the fantasy genre.

Except for the part where the game math was devised by a lifetime resident of an asylum, sure. (Or possibly that was just the person who tried to describe them in the manual, I haven't reverse-engineered them.)

I particularly like the fact that increasing your rated attack damage actually causes you to kill opponents with armor in a certain range more slowly. Or, conversely, adding more armor sometimes causes you to take more damage. Though that's far from the only insanity.

I've got nothing bad to say about the setting or storyline, though (or as much of it as I've actually played).

[Bigode]

Back on topic, here're the buffs, finally (I'll eventually add them to the main list):

0: guidance, resistance, virtue
1: divine favor, endure elements, enlarge person, entropic shield, mage armor, magic weapon, mount, reduce person, shield, shield of faith
2: aid, barkskin, bear's endurance, bull's strength, cat's grace, false life, fox's cunning, heroism, protection from arrows, resist energy
3: blink, haste, greater magic weapon, keen edge, magic vestment, phantom steed, protection from energy, water breathing
4: death ward, fire shield, stoneskin
5: greater heroism, repulsion, righteous might, spell resistance

Thoughts?

[Jacob_Orlove]

Isn't his spell list now just all the good spells from levels 1-5? Why not just give it Trollman-Suliin Sorcerer style casting at that point?

Honestly, it's not like you'd break the Trollman-Suliin Sorcerer by giving it full BAB, good Fort, and some fighter feats.

[RandomCasualty]

1186167283[/unixtime]]
Except for the part where the game math was devised by a lifetime resident of an asylum, sure. (Or possibly that was just the person who tried to describe them in the manual, I haven't reverse-engineered them.)

I particularly like the fact that increasing your rated attack damage actually causes you to kill opponents with armor in a certain range more slowly. Or, conversely, adding more armor sometimes causes you to take more damage. Though that's far from the only insanity.

I've got nothing bad to say about the setting or storyline, though (or as much of it as I've actually played).

Heh, explain how these mechanics work... that sounds... well ... weird.

[Manxome]

Heh, explain how these mechanics work... that sounds... well ... weird.

If the target's armor is less than the attacker's damage, subtract the armor from the damage. For example, attacking for 50 against a target with 40 armor will end up dealing 10 damage.

If the target's armor is greater than or equal to the attacker's damage, it blocks "most of" the damage. For example, attacking for 32 against a target with 40 armor will end up dealing "about 10" damage (this example taken directly from the manual).

According to the manual, having a rated damage of 32 or a rated damage of 50 both end up hurting a target with 40 armor the same amount. And attacking with 45 would presumably hurt less than attacking with 32.

This probably doesn't cause your brain to explode quite as frequently as you might think, because most weapons seem to deal a fairly wide range of random damage, but it's the principle of the thing.

Another one I liked was how dexterity improves your accurcy, but only for melee weapons. All ranged attacks automatically hit if the projectile enters the target's panel, and all projectiles go exactly where you click. So dexterity actually sucks if you're using a bow, except for the fact that the bow itself has a sufficiently high dexterity requirement to prevent anyone who's not dexterity-focused from ever equipping a level-appropriate bow in the first place. Your goal as a ranged-fighter is almost certainly to keep your dexterity as low as you possibly can while still meeting the minimum requirements of your weapon, while melee characters actually want dexterity, but don't need it for their equipment.

Intelligence isn't much better; it actually provides a direct bonus to your mana regeneration, but it's a tiny fraction of the bonus you can get from wearing caster gear (which, of course, has intelligence requirements). Your base mana regeneration is 1/sec. A staff--any staff--adds another 1/sec (and gives you a free elemental ranged attack that, like a bow, can't miss). You can wear armor with no magical enhancements for a total bonus of something like +100% regeneration, which multiplies the staff bonus as well, giving you a total of 4/sec. Then you put a full level's worth of stat points into intelligence (raising it by 6) and get...+0.06/sec regeneration. Which is not multiplied by the % bonus on the armor. Which means you could dump 100% of your points into intelligence for 50 levels and get about as large a bonus from intelligence as you're getting from nonmagical equipment at level 1. You care a little bit more about the bonus elemental damage you're doing from high intelligence, but only a little bit--and that's if you're doing elemental damage at all, which I think fully half of the casting professions are not (except from their staff weapon).

My Nature character basically ran around and let summoned wolves kill everything...they had better speed, reflexes, and (I think) damage than me, and didn't need to contend with the UI. Only played through the first act, though.

[Bigode]

Isn't his spell list now just all the good spells from levels 1-5? Why not just give it Trollman-Suliin Sorcerer style casting at that point?

Honestly, it's not like you'd break the Trollman-Suliin Sorcerer by giving it full BAB, good Fort, and some fighter feats.

If by "all the good" you mean "all the non-stupid, non-ridiculous" (since I don't see fabricate here), you're right. But, well, I don't wanna either balance it against Tome material, or give it so many options that many players willing to play a warrior-mage would be paralyzed. Also, there's the fact, despite me having liked the Trollman/Suilin sorcerer, that this method of casting increases the class' power in ways that aren't even easily predictable as more books get released, which I hate. If you'd like to take this and do so, go ahead (and tell me how it went).

[Jacob_Orlove]

That's not actually true--they have to do spell research to get any non-core spells at all.

Honestly, if you want to get rid of all the stupid and/or broken spells, it seems like it'd be better to just do that, setting the spell list for your campaign to this (with divine casters getting, what, probably summons and heals instead of some of the good spells).

Then you can give this any style spellcasting you want, and be fine, since it will only have access to good-but-not-broken spells anyway.

[Captain_Bleach]

1185956457[/unixtime]]"Hey, guys, it looks like some other people here (namely, Aktariel and Captain Bleach) share my interest in a D&D lower-powered than the Tomes (at a lower balance level than that of the monsters)"

The question, I think, is: what do you use for opposition in those circumstances?

It's not about the power level, but about using rules that make sense.

It can be high-powered Dragon Ball Z style for all I care, just make it so that people who decide to be one class/archetype/etc. than another not get screwed in almost every way by their choice. And by this, I am referring to the gap between noncasters, partial casters, and full casters.

[Bigode]

That's not actually true--they have to do spell research to get any non-core spells at all.

Honestly, if you want to get rid of all the stupid and/or broken spells, it seems like it'd be better to just do that, setting the spell list for your campaign to this (with divine casters getting, what, probably summons and heals instead of some of the good spells).

Ops, sorry; but still, a good part of the intent was avoiding the "intractable problem", as Frank wisely called it, of, say, a newbie handling the entire spell list; essentially, it was more of a matter of time to be spent deciding.

[Jacob_Orlove]

This class walks in at level one with 46 different spells available. For reference, there are 58 level 0 and level 1 Sor/Wiz spells in the PHB.

Beguilers, by contrast, get "only" 21 spells available at first level.

I just don't see what you're trying to accomplish with this spell list. It's not going to make things easy for new players, at all.

[RandomCasualty]

1187219565[/unixtime]]
If the target's armor is less than the attacker's damage, subtract the armor from the damage. For example, attacking for 50 against a target with 40 armor will end up dealing 10 damage.

If the target's armor is greater than or equal to the attacker's damage, it blocks "most of" the damage. For example, attacking for 32 against a target with 40 armor will end up dealing "about 10" damage (this example taken directly from the manual).

According to the manual, having a rated damage of 32 or a rated damage of 50 both end up hurting a target with 40 armor the same amount. And attacking with 45 would presumably hurt less than attacking with 32.

This probably doesn't cause your brain to explode quite as frequently as you might think, because most weapons seem to deal a fairly wide range of random damage, but it's the principle of the thing.

Another one I liked was how dexterity improves your accurcy, but only for melee weapons. All ranged attacks automatically hit if the projectile enters the target's panel, and all projectiles go exactly where you click. So dexterity actually sucks if you're using a bow, except for the fact that the bow itself has a sufficiently high dexterity requirement to prevent anyone who's not dexterity-focused from ever equipping a level-appropriate bow in the first place. Your goal as a ranged-fighter is almost certainly to keep your dexterity as low as you possibly can while still meeting the minimum requirements of your weapon, while melee characters actually want dexterity, but don't need it for their equipment.

Intelligence isn't much better; it actually provides a direct bonus to your mana regeneration, but it's a tiny fraction of the bonus you can get from wearing caster gear (which, of course, has intelligence requirements). Your base mana regeneration is 1/sec. A staff--any staff--adds another 1/sec (and gives you a free elemental ranged attack that, like a bow, can't miss). You can wear armor with no magical enhancements for a total bonus of something like +100% regeneration, which multiplies the staff bonus as well, giving you a total of 4/sec. Then you put a full level's worth of stat points into intelligence (raising it by 6) and get...+0.06/sec regeneration. Which is not multiplied by the % bonus on the armor. Which means you could dump 100% of your points into intelligence for 50 levels and get about as large a bonus from intelligence as you're getting from nonmagical equipment at level 1. You care a little bit more about the bonus elemental damage you're doing from high intelligence, but only a little bit--and that's if you're doing elemental damage at all, which I think fully half of the casting professions are not (except from their staff weapon).

My Nature character basically ran around and let summoned wolves kill everything...they had better speed, reflexes, and (I think) damage than me, and didn't need to contend with the UI. Only played through the first act, though.

wow, those are some terrible mechanics..

[Bigode]

This class walks in at level one with 46 different spells available. For reference, there are 58 level 0 and level 1 Sor/Wiz spells in the PHB.

Beguilers, by contrast, get "only" 21 spells available at first level.

I just don't see what you're trying to accomplish with this spell list. It's not going to make things easy for new players, at all.

The difference is that a Trollman/Suilin sorcerer has a lot of options to choose something to do from each time it gets a standard action (and, later, each time it gets a swift action), while a gish has more to pick from than a beguiler at character creation, when there's much more time to get things talked properly than during combat. After that, it's supposed to get options like a sorcerer (thus, gains new ones with leveling) - while I know Frank's opinion on the sorcerer spell learning sucking and know why he has it, I think the problem essentially goes away with a little time taken from the GM.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Oh, I need to apologize. I missed the "spells known: as duskblade" line, and thought you were giving this Beguiler-style casting.

Okay, my complaint now is that this class knows way too few spells, and has a lot of garbage still on the spell list (you expect people to spend a spell known on Animate Rope?).