>2023
>Still no standardized name for "magic sword guy" besides Gish
>Still not a standard class in D&D
Why? It cannot possibly be that hard to balance "guy who buffs himself with magic during a fight."
>2023. >Still no standardized name for "magic sword guy" besides Gish
not a standard class in D&D
It used to be.
It's because it doesn't quite "gel" with the existing lineup, to the point they specifically pruned Bard's "canned gish" functionality in 5e to make them Yet Another Full Spellcaster.
Actually it was specifically for Wizard/Fighter dual-class Githyanki, IIRC.
"Master of both" is very much what
is shitting on you for. You can't do that in a game where there are classes who's sole purpose is mastery of one of them alone. Competency in one is a sacrifice in the other over the Wizard/Fighter duo, demanding you spend magic to boost combat skills to "catch up" or have them pointedly out of the way of eachother.
>The problem is that of course you can't just let people be twice the level of other people in the party.
This is the problem with your entire concept. You cannot be using magic and melee at the same time if they're both full-throughput, because then you're outputting what is supposed to be two separate characters. The "spellsword" you want mixing magic and melee directly has to be mediocre in each separately so that the combination of the two is simply on par. If you want an expert in both, they must be highly specialized in each field, with these specializations not touching to avoid combination problems.
Still exists in Pathfinder
But also it's one of those classes that just kind of sucks wiener to play because you end up not being good at combat but also being kind of mediocre at spellcasting instead of being a seamlessly weaving master of both
>cites pathfinder
>assumedly means magus
>>>not good at combat
I made a basic b***h spell specialization (shocking grasp) magus, and I became the metric by which the GM had to scale monsters since I would oneshot them if he didn't
By combat I mean swordplay, it's fricking 3.x of course you can oneshot every monster on level if you build properly
>By combat I mean swordplay
o autist of the pedantic variety, what the frick does that mean?
Martial combat? BAB? To-hit rolls? Damage if you run into anything with SR? Why're you being so obtuse?
>BAB? To-hit rolls? Damage if you run into anything with SR?
just... buff yourself and get rid of those problems? you're a spellcaster, you have the flexibility to have more options than full attacking
Magus list is dogshit and if you played a Wizard you could just buff the fighter instead
Magus is like, the archetypical fifth wheel up there with Bard. I guess it's a passable fighter replacement if you're sure you'll never run into a golem or something.
No you don't understand he has to be just as good as the fighter without needing his spells but also just as capable as the wizard without his sword. If it isn't the best of both worlds without any drawbacks then it isn't good!
That's not what I'm saying, the class itself is fairly balanced but at least for me the archetype isn't "mediocre at raw combat skills and also nearly useless at spells" but an expert or master of both who can weave them seamlessly
Magus at least has support for properly weaving spells into combat unlike Eldritch fricking Knight
>If it isn't the best of both worlds without any drawbacks then it isn't good!
>the archetype... an expert or master of both who can weave them seamlessly
kinda self-owned there anon
The class is good. It doesn't fit the archetype. Learn to fricking read.
I think you're projecting your own illiteracy, anon
The archetype of the spellsword is not someone who's dogshit at fighting and also dogshit at spells, it's someone who is great at both. Realistically, it is the Wizard 1/Fighter 1 compared to either the Wizard 1 or the Fighter 1. The problem is that of course you can't just let people be twice the level of other people in the party. Given that, Magus is a good class, just not what I'm looking for in a spellsword. What's hard to understand?
Ah I see you're baiting
Play Adventurer Conqueror King System. There's a spellsword who has a higher XP cost for leveling but is both a full caster and a full fighter; a Ruinguard who is a half caster, full fighter and has dark powers, and then the option to make your own classes, like the Dark Elf Commando. PDF related.
EK gets some of the best defensive/combat support spells in the game, like Shield. He couod be called the master of defensive magic.
Eldritch Knight has Eldritch Strike and War Magic, but War Magic is dogshit on a Fighter, because it has anti-synergy with Extra Attack and Two-Weapon Fighting. Eldritch Strike is also dogshit if your DM uses the interpretation that the bonus action attack from War Magic must occur after casting a spell, so you need to wait until your next turn to actually get the combo off.
Bladesinger got it right by allowing you to cast a spell in place of one of your attacks, allowing you to still benefit from Extra Attack. If Eldritch Knight were able to do the same, then the archetype would be perfect.
This. In my experience, this is how these kinds of classes work. You get a combination of this kind of thing:
>Can do as much damage as a fighter.. on a per day basis
>Ranged spells ripped right from wizard that are underpowered in the first place
>Gets cool support spells after they are long irrelevant
>Is just an elementally themed fighter that gets none of the competence hole plugging spells you'd actually want magic for anyway
>the element you get is the most commonly resisted by all usable templates
>Gets the actual good spells copied to them but with scaling so bad you'll hope the campaign remains low level forever
>Not even a Warrior-Wizard at all. Ruining the point of gimping yourself for flavor too
>Abilities are designed are so backwards it's obvious whoever designed them never played the game
>Things just don't work in combat how they should
Pick a few of these fatal flaws to include. Cause it's rarely just one.
I mean this is accurate now, but until the later Oaths, Paladins were very much in the zone of underspecialization. I like current Paladins, but you have several Oaths that you absolutely should not take because they are effectively liabilities.
But it's worth noting that simply having the option to use magic at all is significant, especially if your GM lets you use third party supplements. Deep Magic in particular adds a bunch of utility for low-level casting.
Like Shakespeare said: jack of all trades, master of none, often better than the master of one.
What it's important is that there's strong synergy between the martial and magical abilities of our MagicFightingMan. If you don't have that, party specialization and action economy will make them rubbish even if they are a proper 50/50 split. It's why the Paladin works in 5e and the Ranger shit.
Wow, you made a shocking cancer magus that was good at killing shit.
You'd have to try to make that cookie-cutter build shit.
Did you think pointing out something that was already made implicit in that post makes you smart?
cleric
paladin
eldritch knight
etc
i know d&d is bad but like. You can play a dude with a sword and magic who's ok at both. You can't play a dude with a sword and magic and be the best at them.
>Bladesinger
Yes you can
Spellsword
Battlemage if you go for heavy armor.
Spellblade is much better because it doesn't pigeonhole you into wielding a specific weapon.
What if I don't want to use a blade?
OP asked specifically for "magic sword guy", so he was only looking for one weapon anyway.
Learn how to read.
>Spellblade
>doesn't pigeonhole you into wielding a specific weapon
Except for, you know, bladed ones, Which are only about a third of weapons in D&D.
That's all well and good but Spellsword is portmanteau for sellsword, which is slang for mercenary. Spellblade doesn't sound as good and therefore is less cool and more lame, making it invalid.
>Spellsword is portmanteau for sellsword
You don't know what a portmanteau is you moron.
>Blend word
>In linguistics, a blend—sometimes known, perhaps more narrowly, as a blend word, lexical blend, portmanteau, or portmanteau word—is a word formed, usually intentionally, by combining the sounds and meanings of two or more words.
Case in point, homosexual is a blend word in meaning for (you)
You still don't know what a portmanteau is. Let me explain. You are both an idiot and narcissist. If we wanted to describe you accurately, we would need another word. In an effort to make it discernible at a glance, we can call you a narcissidiot. That is a portmanteau.
Spellsword is a portmanteau of "spell" and "sword." Sellsword is a portmanteau of "sell" and "sword." There is no relation between spellsword and sellsword other than they are both portmanteaus.
I hope this helps. I know it won't. You'll continue to insist you're the greatest linguist until the heat death of your universe.
All it takes is for a swordsman who uses spells to become a warrior for hire in order for that to work.
Oh, wait a second, what are adventurers, usually? Freelance warriors for hire.
Get fricked homosexual.
I have no dog in this fight, but I'd like to let you know that you're moronic
>"I have no dog"
>yet has to snipe for some reason
Hmmm.
I'm not the original anon who told you that you're an idiot. I'm a different anon telling you that you're an idiot. Because you're an idiot who doesn't understand what a portmanteau is. As I noted, you'll continue to insist you're the greatest linguist until the heat death of your universe. No need to prove me right.
>There is no relation between spellsword and sellsword
>spellsword is an adventurer class
>adventurers are typically sellswords
>but no, there is no relation, I swear
I cannot imagine being this fricking mad about failing English. You failed English. It's fine. We don't require that for graduating from high school any more because it's unfair to...uh...lots of people. cough Yeah, lots of people.
I don't really have the desire to teach a bunch of grammar lessons on Ganker of all places. Let's just reiterate that that anon doesn't understand what a portmanteau is and is clearly confused as to whether spellsword is a blended word with sellsword as one of the roots (it is not, but at least that would be less wrong than calling it a portmanteau).
Portmanteau do not have to be direct, only ESL think this way, they can be alliterative, dipshit.
Only a monolingual moron would think that someone who studied a second language would not be keenly aware of how its grammar works compared to a native speaker.
So tell us how adventurers aren't typically hired warriors, that way we can establish sellswords who happen to use magic can't ever be spellswords, because there's absolutely no relation.
The fun part is that the term sell-sword doesn't even have to refer to a mercenary who uses a fricking sword in the first place and instead of being literal can be used as shorthand slang for anyone hired for money regardless of weapon. Autist ESL tards cannot comprehend shit like the fact that the term freelancer doesn't mean the given mercenary in question actually uses a fricking lance.
So a Spellsword can just as easily be used for anyone that uses a weapon and spells. A spellsword doesn't have to use a goddamn sword, you just need a martial or simple weapon. Because the term is a lingual shorthand derivative just like above but autismos are being homosexuals as per the usual.
Oh my God. Thank you. You said that so much more eloquently than I ever could.
So a portmanteau?
Are you quite literally moronic, anon?
You were told, quite clearly, that "spellsword" is a portmanteau of "spell" and "sword" and not "sellsword" and "spell." The two words have nothing to do with each other other than being the same kind of blended word. But you keep going around accusing people of being ESL when it's pretty clear you failed English after, say, 10th grade? That sound right? Probably graduated with Debate as your third English credit, but you were shit at that too, I'd wager.
>You were told, quite clearly, that "spellsword" is a portmanteau of "spell" and "sword" and not "sellsword" and "spell."
No, they were told that "spellsword" is a portmantu for "sellsword", without another word to portmantu WITH:
That's the start of this shit-flinging.
You need two words to create a portmanteau. Spellsword is already a portmanteau. Sellsword is already a portmanteau.
The whole thing started with anon sperging out over being told spellsword isn't a portmanteau of sellsword (and another word, as implied by portmanteau, and spell is the only one that makes sense).
>The whole thing started with anon sperging out and screaming because spellsword is a portmanteau of sellsword and spell.
Minor correction to fix your post
Sell-sword is the portmanteau, it's three words, sword, sell and mercenary as the floating component of meaning with SPELL being the replacement blend word to create a new blend word as a derivative of mercenary that uses spells with a weapon. Oh, and considering Spellswords still have to use somatic or verbal components in some spells, the term can even be double entendre, or triple! If you really want to think about that, but please don't for fear of nose bleeds.
I'll just jump in here and say that most adventurers I've played and played with in the last fifteen real life years I've been playing are not hired very often at all, usually doing heroics because they are the only ones who can and making most of their money on loot and sometimes rewards or bounties (not always formally declared beforehand) that they were not directly employed or even engaged to take.
Why yes, your atypical anecdotal experience is different from what is typical.
Thanks for mentioning that.
It's not atypical.
Literal fricking autism. The other word was obviously "spell", you moron.
>you used that term wrong
>AAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE FRICK YOU FRICK YOU FRICK YOU AUTIST moron
ok
Are you illiterate, ESL-gay?
It was used correctly.
Sellsword + Spell = Spellsword
It's not rocket science esl-kun.
You literally made this thread less than a month ago you drooling McMongoloid. You were given innumerable examples of why you were moronic, yet you still decided to come back and shit up the board with the exact same thing. Do you just enjoy pretending that you don't know what is and isn't in D&D? Do you LIKE being told you're an imbecile? Is it a fetish? You're jerking off to this, aren't you?
Elf class WAS A D&D STANDARD SINCE 74 YOU homosexualROON
>elf
>guy
Ever heard of the Elf?
What's wrong with "spellsword"?
Also, play an actual game, instead of something that has such an inconsistency with the power of its player options.
Swordsage
Warblade
Crusader
Duskblade
Psychic Warrior
Soulknife
As far as I know, all are base classes in 3.5e
Why did you put Soulknife in there? It's like has nothing to do with being a gish, spellsword or whatever. It's shit.
He gets to shape his mind blade into an actual sword and apply extra properties to it as he levels up. He can create mini-copies of it which he can shoot at Opponents or fragment it and create a "blade wind". No offence but that's "magic sword guy" to me.
>2023
>hobby that's based around doing what you want
>hobby whose materials (such as dice, note cards, notebooks, graph paper, calculators) are dirt cheap and sold pretty much everywhere or delivered via online shopping
>hobby whose every structural aspect (probability, rule organization, gameplay mechanics) can be researched online
>hobby whose pathetic defenders will tell you to rewrite what you don't like when someone says anything bad about their precious books, whose creators said they don't even need to run a game in the first place
>still makes threads whining about what's "standardized"
>still makes threads in relation to the !game most defended with rewrite what you don't like
have a nice day.
Traumaturge
People who want 1 class gishes are cancer. They're never fine being just okay at both halves, they want to be amazing at both halves, as good as a specialized martial and specialized caster. Then they get pissy when they're marginally less good at stabbing things or throwing fireballs. But what they want is horrible for game balance, because it basically makes the class the best class in the book. This thread is just another example of this phenomenon.
Just play Sword World instead, it literally supports that kind of multiclassing as a core game mechanic. Classes are building blocks, and only having one is a pointless self-gimp.
I think DnD very sparingly adds entirely new classes now, it's all subclasses.
But really you can just the Book of Weeaboo Fightin Magic.
D&D is a class-based game. If you just want to do the specialized gimmicks of two classes at once, go play a pure point-buy system.
Multiclassing has been in D&D for over 20 years at this point?
Hell, in some regards it goes back to the fricking 70s with the race-as-class schemes frequently doing "as level X plus level Y".
Play an actual game whose classes have been tested by people who care about game design, instead of leaving fans to defend it with rewrite what you don't like.
D&D isn't a game.
Okay? Yes, you should play a different game. Preferably one that is actually a game. One with a point-buy system that doesn't flag when dealing with dual specialization, in the case of the OP.
Just play a duskblade bro
Why a stand-alone class when you can make options for the other ones to do exactly that?
There was. It was called Hexblade and it was easily the best class in the edition. So good the community actively lied to say it was bad in hopes it would get more buffs, but WoTC cleverly saw through their communities lies.
Duskblade was pimp as hell.
Maybe if you stop playing Dnd you would find a appropriate name for it
It's called a Paladin in 5e.
4e exists. Sword Mages existed. You frickers cried until they ceased to exist. Frick you.
4e was the best edition in DnD history. It's a pity WotC thinks it's a failure because the dumb business decisions that let Paizo spin off a retroclone and steal half of the fan base.
They really shouldn't have tried to take Dungeon and Dragon magazines in-house.
they're called jedi
There are so many variants of using magic and swords together that making only one class for it would be a disservice. Everything from Paladin to Ranger to Cleric to Wizard to Warlock can do a variant of magic sword guy and you’re too fricking moronic to actually build it how you want it because “it’s not a standard class”
>Needing to have something written out for you by literal homosexuals so you can do the thing
b***h even without DMG prestige classes when I was learning 3.5 I played sorcerer paladins
>game of sword and sorcery
>needs a specific name for guy who uses sword and sorcery
Just play 4e, it had spellblades. Or better, play an adept in SotDL.
In 5e there are paladins, which are very easy to refluff as a mage knight, especially since their oaths are so varied now.
Reminder that Mining the Chans is your fault because you don't report shitposters.
>2023
>homosexual OP
>homosexual thread
Why?
>It cannot possibly be that hard to balance "guy who buffs himself with magic during a fight."
Bard?
>light armor
>sabre
>ranged spells
Could make good cavalry, you could call it the Gish Gallop.
Wasn't the Cavalier already some sort of gish bullshit?
It's a pun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
Nah, the old Cavalier was basically just a different kind of Paladin. Less about wielding divine power and more about negating harmful spells while also being a very traditional knight in shining armor. Depending on edition and rules being used, it was a kit that could be applied to either Fighters (basically just making a Paladin the long way around) or a Paladin (making a Paladin so pure and noble that they'd make Lancelot look like a chump).
But to actually make a Cavalier Paladin, you'd need the most bullshit stat spread ever. At minimum, you'd need 15 in all three physical stats, 10 intelligence, 13 wisdom, and 17 charisma. Fall short in even one stat, and you won't qualify to be a Cavalier and/or a Paladin.
You’re looking for the knight phantom, dnd 3.5 PrC that progressed wizard casting with mostly full BAB, even let you cast the phantom steed spell a lot for free so you always had a horse. Decent even if it isn’t meta. https://dndtools.net/classes/knight-phantom/
Gishes aren't just "combatant buffed with magic," otherwise everything from Eldritch Knight (who can barely do anything cool other than hoard Shield spellslots) to codzilla counts.
Its more about the (rarely achieved) dream of a character who can hit things with weapons + harm opponents with spells and (the important part) actually gets something out of it, whereas most of the time, cramming in swordplay and attack spells winds up being inferior either to just blasting your troubles and using the martial side just for improved survivability and in some editions armor, or souping yourself up.
Where the Elf(TM) falls on this scale is hard for me to rate by modern standards since they're weird both in xp and level caps, but at least its a class and not a build you have to wait half the game to come online.
The PF magus, for example, is what I'd view as a very basic gish. Fun, though mostly a Shocking Grasp-bot. Something like a FF spellblade would be cool.