Warmages, Spellthiefs, and Psionicists

[Andarkay]

I would love to see any of these classes in DDO. My suggested classes are as follows:

Warmage, pages 10 - 12 in the Complete Arcane;

Spellthief, pages 13 - 20 in the Complete Adventurer;

Psion, Psionic Warrior, or Soulknife, found in the Expanded Psionics Handbook.

Thanks for reading my suggestions!

[goodoldxelos]

I would love to see any of these classes in DDO. My suggested classes are as follows:

Psion, Psionic Warrior, or Soulknife, found in the Expanded Psionics Handbook.



I do sense a Psionics update.

Would love to see these 3... but seeing the limited dev resources I'd rather see fixing what we already have and expanding on the current classes and prestige enhancements.

[HatsuharuZ]

What would Warmage add to DDO that Wizards and Sorcerers don't? By the way, I don't have the books you listed, so I have no clue about Warmages and Spellthieves.... Psionic classes have been discussed quite a bit, so I have an idea of what those are about.

[donfilibuster]

With druid out of the way there's less big classes left adding.
Psion is a strong one, Warlock would also be candidate.
These adds their whole set of powers, either would be a fresh class for ddo.
The first is a full caster that can augment their castings (aside of metas).
The second is a specialist using SLAs and UMD, this one is from the Complete Arcane.

Spellthief, Scout, etc. will likely have to wait until after those.
They have good toys, enough for a whole class instead of a PrE, but not as much as the above ones.
Note the other class from the Complete Adventurer, the Ninja is very much the monk's PrE in DDO.
In theory these two can be rogue PrEs, both have trapfinding, a form of SA and the scout has evasion.
The spellthief's main toy is stealing spells from the enemy, which is kind of fun.
Also relies in that PnP has spells u must roll to hit, which isn't in DDO, these count as weaponlike for SA.
The scout can sneak attack while moving, called skirmish, which may sound silly but works without stealth.
Note skirmish works with melee thus isn't necessarily a ranged class, it would just work good for it.

The warmage tho, isn't for battlecasters, but rather is just a nuker that can stand in the battle by wearing armor.
It has low bab and have no buffs in the list, except Tenser, and that would take away from dps as you'll expect.
Battlecasters that melee better look elsewhere, to PrCs like the eldritch knight, spellsword, etc.
On the upside, the warmage's nuking power steals the nuking job of the sorcerer.
It has a limited spell list but can cast any spell from it spontaneously, all of them.
Most are evocations that we have in DDO, but has fod and wail too, and as said there's no buffs.

And mind some sorcerers in the harbor think they can stand in the battle, minus the armor (some can, some just drain healers).
This class is kind of intended for settings with lots of war, it's also one of the choices for the miniatures game.
(like the Healer class, where you won't use the regular classes)

[masterzzan]

as a P&P GM i refuse to allow my players to play some of the classes you mentioned.

war-mage : get to use armor ,1d6 hp, get at least other 5 meta-feats, cast every useful combat spell around. and is "balanced" by removing all the spells,that no caster ever take , from his spell book(and the spells he really need that are not in book can still be acquired via advanced learning class ability)
oh and just for an extra kick he get to cast every spell he knows with out preparing it and can cast more spells per day. (like a sorc)
.-unbalanced compared to normal mage.you want to cast spells in armor. get the still spell or other useful feat.

spellthief i actually don't mind as he is very nicely balanced not as many sneak attack damage as a thief can't cast high level arcane spells by himself.

Psions... let me put it this way:
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/4913/psionics.jpg

[Gizeh]

I don't know the Warmage and Spellthief classes, but maybe you can emulate them with multiclassing and appropriate feat selections.

As for psionicists, I share masterzzan's opinion. While I've never checked the 3E psionics rules they were grossly overpowered in previous editions of the game.

[azrael4h]

I don't know the Warmage and Spellthief classes, but maybe you can emulate them with multiclassing and appropriate feat selections.

As for psionicists, I share masterzzan's opinion. While I've never checked the 3E psionics rules they were grossly overpowered in previous editions of the game.

3.5e Psionics are simply spellcasting with spell points instead of slots. Most of the abilities mirror arcane spells.

[Ilindith]

As if DDO needs an arcane caster class with Blade Barrier.

[Gizeh]

3.5e Psionics are simply spellcasting with spell points instead of slots. Most of the abilities mirror arcane spells.

Does spell resistance also apply to pionics in 3E/3.5? The complete lack of any psionic resistance - except for a few monsters that were included in the psionic rules - was the major issue in previous versions ("pffft, it's just a red wyrm, he can't resist my psi powers").

[licho]

As if DDO needs an arcane caster class with Blade Barrier.

Artificers says: "Been there, done that." '-)

As for new classes:
1st Release the enhancement pass please
2nd Buff all crappy classes: Rangers and Paladins, also various degree of buffs are needed to: Bards, Barbarians, Fighters.

Simply, make the currently avaiable classes more or less balanced, and complete, and fun.
And then think about new stuff.

As for which classes i see space for:
1. Sword and fireball class, with a perks:
- Martial weapons use, primary melee
- some buff/offensive arcane spells selection
- Way to combine 1st with 2nd (like arcane channeling)
- No rogue within (more warrior than specialist) and more offensive than buffer.
- Armor
The class for that would be Duskblade, or some of Tome of 9 Swords classes.

2. Warlock
Mostly for unlimited magic pew pew spam, since it may be fun to play. Some people likes to pew pew with a bow, others with eldrich blast. The PrE may be for various versions of Draconic SHamans, Infernal Warlocks and so on.
In many ways warlocks seems to be more balanced than Sorcerers nowadays.

I dotn exacly see a need for psions, since the psionic system is too similar to what we have now.

[Ilindith]

Artificers says: "Been there, done that." '-)

Artificers are far, far from that.

Warmage is...well...imagine a sorc with every blasting spell like DBF and give him Blade Barrier on top of that.

Would be quite overpowered in this game.

[Arakasia]

If psionicists were available, then I would guarrantee I would buy it without even thinking about it,

IT is/was my favourite class from PnP, and I would love to make my toon from there on here,
Unfortunately I can't make her Neutral Evil but wouldn't care too much if that was the only thing I missed out on.


yum, got my mouth all drooling about it, just thinking about it

[Jaid314]

as a P&P GM i refuse to allow my players to play some of the classes you mentioned.

[snip]

Psions... let me put it this way:
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/4913/psionics.jpg


As for psionicists, I share masterzzan's opinion. While I've never checked the 3E psionics rules they were grossly overpowered in previous editions of the game.


Does spell resistance also apply to pionics in 3E/3.5? The complete lack of any psionic resistance - except for a few monsters that were included in the psionic rules - was the major issue in previous versions ("pffft, it's just a red wyrm, he can't resist my psi powers").

so... in other words, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you make any statements about psionics in 3.x D&D. glad it's not you doing the decision making here. you should first actually get information before you make a statement about anything (3.5 psionics is freely available in the online SRD, so cost isn't an excuse. if time is your excuse, then you shouldn't be taking the time to tell us what it's like before you take the time to know what it's like...)

lots of stuff was broken in earlier editions. haste used to give you double attacks, enlarge used to give you +10% damage per caster level, polymorph other used to let you turn random animals into whatever creature with a valuable carcass you might want and then kill them, chromatic orb used to be a save-and-you're-still-screwed spell (iirc at one point it became death if you fail a save, stunned for 3d4 rounds if you succeed), bards used to get level 3 spells before wizards in terms of exp, elves used to be able to get double the ROF with bows as anyone else could ever hope for (and were also technically the only ones allowed to wear elven chain, and even then only if they were fighter/mages), numerous spells didn't have saving throws if you were higher level than the target's HD (especially great for bards, which had absurd exp tables), and in general, lots of stuff had so many problems that the problems had problems.

none of that makes it a valid reason to treat the current edition of D&D as having the same rules as they did in the past. earlier editions of psionics had problems. this does not mean that all editions of psionics have problems (or at least, not more so than any other part of the rules; no rule set is perfect that i've found). in fact, 3.5 psionics is generally considered less powerful than 3.5 spellcasting by a significant margin by those who've actually taken the time to learn the rules on them).

with that said... i have a hard time feeling a strong need for psionics in DDO. i'm not sure how much it would really add to spellcasting, most of the really interesting powers aren't really suited for an MMO, or are not terribly different from spells in the first place. it makes a pretty big difference for pen and paper games, but i'm not sure it would do much for DDO.

[donfilibuster]

I don't know the Warmage and Spellthief classes, but maybe you can emulate them with multiclassing and appropriate feat selections.

As for psionicists, I share masterzzan's opinion. While I've never checked the 3E psionics rules they were grossly overpowered in previous editions of the game.
Similar yeah, but the main toys are unique, they can perhaps be made into a PrE like the Ninja was for Monk.
For psions the 3.5e version was revised and thus not broken as it used to be tought of psionics in the past.
Lots of discussion in the community forums of wizards.com debated it over the years.




3.5e Psionics are simply spellcasting with spell points instead of slots. Most of the abilities mirror arcane spells.
Isn't that simple, there's some of that yeah but overall it opens the door for a class that has many perks that arcanes don't have.
(e.g. using the focus, augmenting powers, using another's known powers, transferring PP, etc.)



so... in other words, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you make any statements about psionics in 3.x D&D. glad it's not you doing the decision making here. you should first actually get information before you make a statement about anything (3.5 psionics is freely available in the online SRD, so cost isn't an excuse. if time is your excuse, then you shouldn't be taking the time to tell us what it's like before you take the time to know what it's like...)

People's views may be outdated but goes to show there's still need to talk people out of it.
The bunny joke was a classic, the whole psionics is overpowered debate is fairly traditional.
It is no longer deemed so, but it went on for too long that it the idea is kind of fixed.
A lot of forum posts, ink and spit has been spent over the years to make it clear psions are not as powerful as one would think.

It's still confusing as hell, because psionics is truly a third branch, aside of arcanes and divines, so it tends to appear out of place.
It is naturally going to have overlap, use metamagics, etc. Also affects that the use of SP is already in DDO.
There's not enough staple powers in the way one could tell apart arcanes from divines.
But it's just that being a different background the schools and specialities are organized differently.
I'd worry more that powers that are mental may not be flashy enough for a MMO, that might be a bigger issue.



Does spell resistance also apply to pionics in 3E/3.5? The complete lack of any psionic resistance - except for a few monsters that were included in the psionic rules - was the major issue in previous versions ("pffft, it's just a red wyrm, he can't resist my psi powers").
Won't worry about that yet, since equivalency it's up to the devs.
The easy way to balance things is to make them compatible, but even if not the monsters like drow would indeed have both resistances.

[Andarkay]

The Warmage's main ability is the ability to not be effected by arcane spell failure. If I recall correctly, it can only use spells of the evocation school. Honestly, I've always preferred the Battle Sorcerer class variant, which has no spell school limitations, but has less of an armored casting progression.

With the Spellthief class, it's entirely more practical in the PnP, I figured if they decided to add, they'd take more creative liberties with it.

As far as psionics, the main point of the awkward balancing mostly apply to pencil and paper. The worst of it was there being no "Psionic Spell Failure," meaning they can use any armor they're proficient with, and the fact that they were able to cast their most powerful spells until they're out of psionic points, instead of having spell slots that force you to only a certain number of spells depending on your level and certain stats.