Comments on: Initial Concept: A Martial/Arcane Weapon-based Striker

By: Taylor

Taylor — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:04:17 +0000

Well, you could look at the 3.5 Duskblade for a new name. The original Duskblades were elves who decided to master the arts of the blade and spell, so they were equal parts Fighter and Wizard. They also had an ability to channel their spells into a melee attack.
For the Daily attacks, it might be cool to give them a dual functionality. You can use it as a straight up magical attack or you can channel it into a melee attack with nasty effects.
You’ll also have to give the class some sort of damage boosting class feature to really set the class as a striker

By: Swordgleam

Swordgleam — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:21:27 +0000

I like this, both in terms of the feel and the gimmick. You should do something with this.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:14:40 +0000

Seems like a pretty cool concept. Class design frightens me like nothing else, but I love reading about it, especially when someone tries something special unique to break the mold of 4e classes. What’s even better is that with the Psion, now that WotC is breaking their own mold, you can create a class like this and people won’t say “that challenges the core assumptions of 4e! How dare you!?”.

Can’t wait to see more of this class. And, for what it’s worth, I think the name Switchblade is kinda cool.

By: Ryan Macklin

Ryan Macklin — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 23:54:08 +0000

The Swordmage is too Defender-y for my tastes, at least for this idea. We’ve been playing with one in my campaign for a bit, and I think he rocks — for that role. You’re right in what I’m looking for is essentially an Arcane Ranger (though I seem to see that Strikers come in to categories: focus on a foe and focus on a favorable situation — and this is the latter type)

And yeah, those were meant to be examples of different encounter powers that you would choose, not having access to the entire buffet of powers. So, at level 1, I have one Encounter “Close burst 1, Target: two adjacent creatures” and one Daily “Hit: Target is knocked prone; and all damage is thunder” or something.

I’ll go through the multiclassing article — I missed that the first time.

By: Alex Hunter

Alex Hunter — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:59:07 +0000

I don’t know if you’ve looked at the Hybrid rules but combining elements from Swordmage and Ranger sounds like a good place to begin. Especially if your aim is a Striker class.

A lot of this could be taken from Swordmages with perhaps a new build to swap elemental effects on powers.

I can see each of the effects you listed as different Encounter powers. Being able to add any of the effects you wanted per encounter might be too much. Not sure. Maybe being able to swap out Encounter power adds during short rests as a balance? I think there’s a feat similar to this already. Maybe Arcane Power?