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Dusk Eclipse
2010-02-18, 09:36 PM
While building my Ruby Knight Vindicator I came across the (in)famous arcane swordsage adaptation and decided to give it a try, here are my initial thoughts on how to adapt it

Manoubers known and readied refer to spells known and prepared respectively.
Arcane swordsages got a casting progression similar to the duskblades (up to 5 lvl spells IIRC)
They use wisdom as spellcasting stat.
They get access to mostly touch range spells and some low-duration buffs.
Stances refer to long-lasting buffs such as Mage armor and last for 1/2 Swordsage level +wis modifier rounds, once time finish you must wait 1d4 rounds to activate it again.

Arcane swordsages can use metamagic to alter their spells but they must wait 1d4+X (where x refers to the increase in spell level a metamagic feat would impose, for example it would be 1d4+1 to heighten an spell) rounds to recover the expended spell
And I am still thinking on which spells an arcane swordsage would have access to.

Any thoughts?

Douglas
2010-02-18, 09:42 PM
My take on Arcane Swordsage (I'm starting to think maybe I should link it in my sig):

Yes.

As a general guideline, I'd say that direct attack spells and short term self buffs would work pretty well. Maybe give the attack spells an across the board channeled-through-weapon alteration and make them strikes, change offensive buffs to swift action cast/1 round duration to make them boosts, and change defensive buffs to immediate action cast/1 round duration to make them counters.

In fact, I think laying out guidelines like that might actually be all you really need to do. I think any spells that would be broken on an Arcane Swordsage with these alterations would probably be broken for any character.

So, I'd say give your players these guidelines and let them take it from there:
1) Any spell with a casting time of a standard action or less that you would only ever want to use on an enemy can be taken as a strike. It is altered to be melee range and channeled through a weapon. It only works if you hit with a melee attack, and is in addition to the attack's normal damage. If it is an area spell, you are exempt from being hit by it, but your allies are not (unless otherwise specified in the spell) and it is centered on the enemy you hit.
2) Any spell with a casting time of a standard action or less that you would want to cast on yourself to increase your offensive capabilities may be taken as a boost. It takes a swift action to use and has its duration changed to 1 round. Its level must be adjusted for casting time and duration as listed below. It can only target yourself.
3) Any spell with a casting time of a standard action or less that you would want to cast on yourself to increase your defensive capabilities may be taken as a counter. It takes an immediate action to use and has its duration changed to 1 round. Its level must be adjusted for casting time and duration as listed below. It can only target yourself.
4) Spells as boosts or counters have their level adjusted as follows: If a spell's casting time was already a swift or immediate action, increase its level by 1. For each step on the scale from hours to minutes to rounds to 1 round you have to go through to get its duration down to 1 round, reduce its level by 1. Wraithstrike, for example, is already a swift action and already has a duration of 1 round. It gets boosted one level to 3. Mind Blank on the other hand lasts all day. 24 hours -> minutes -> rounds -> 1 round is 3 steps down, so Mind Blank is a level 5 counter that grants immunity to mind-affecting spells and abilities for 1 round. If a spell has a duration of 1 minute, like Divine Favor or Giant Size, I'd count that as being in the rounds category.

Addendum: Shapechange or similar spells as a boost or counter cannot be used to gain and use limited uses per day abilities.

I think this is reasonably balanced. Even Time Stop as an 8th level counter seems reasonable to me if it's just 1 round on a character with these limits on his spell selection, so long as you rule that the swift action consumed by the immediate action comes from your next non-Time Stopped round, which I think is RAW anyway. All it would really let an Arcane Swordsage do is either run away a little and leave the maneuver expended or recover maneuvers and take a 5' step, and even the latter option could only be done once per round.

Edit: Oh yeah, I didn't address stances in that post. Hmm, I think treating it the same as boosts and counters but with the duration steps reversed to get to hours would work pretty well. Mind Blank as a stance remains 8th level, Shapechange goes up to 10th and thus unreachable pre-epic, Greater Invisibility becomes 6th level (by level 11 a lot of enemies should have See Invisibility anyway, so it really isn't broken imo), and so on.

Dusk Eclipse
2010-02-18, 09:44 PM
Hmm when I have more time, Ill check it thouroughly, I just posted this before I forgot it.

Pluto
2010-02-18, 09:48 PM
It sounds like this could work out alongside other ToB characters pretty well.
Not so much against Fighters or gishes with nearly full caster progressions.
That's probably what you're going for.


They get access to mostly touch range spells and some low-duration buffs.
Turning rays, area spells, etc. into melee strikes and turning buffs into 1-round boosts seems to be the intuitive way to approach this.

[edit:]
Or what douglas said.

faceroll
2010-02-19, 02:19 PM
The free metamagic could be horrifying, since it allows him to persist whatever he pleases.