[4e] I need a good/fun swordmage build

[Coplantor]

It must be either an eladrin or a half elf (I think eladrin is better).

You can use the three player handbooks, the faerun player's guide and arcane power.
Hybrids are OK. Gotta synergize with the rest of the party, a bard and a warlock (probably).

Thanks

[Mando Knight]

Eladrin Assault Swordmage. Get Eladrin Swordmage Advance (AP) and Melee Training/Intelligent Blademaster (PHB2/FRPG) ASAP. Use Eladrin Soldier (PHB1) unless Epic, where you trade it off for Weapon Focus (Heavy Blades), and grab Versatile Expertise (Heavy Blade, Whatever) (PHB3) somewhere down the line if it's not given to you outright. (Versatile Expertise lets you pick both Heavy and Light Blades to use for all your powers, according to the Character Builder) Pick teleport-y powers, give yourself at least 13 base Dex and a decent Con modifier on top of your Str and Int.

Or you can go Half-Elf Shielding, if saying "No, you don't hurt that guy" is your thing, rather than jumping around like chain lightning by 3rd level.

[Coplantor]

OK, nice, any good and intresting options for Paragon Path and Epic Destiny?

[Meta]

Making an assault swordmage that specializes in making the at will power swordburst extremely effective is fun. All of your encounter and daily powers are basically chosen for the cool effects. Its not too difficult to transform swordburst into an area burst 2 within 2 at will power that does all sorts of neat effects and if you take sword of assault paragon path, you get to use it a lot. If this interests you I can do a more full write up

[NeoVid]

Eladrin Swordmage has some of the best synergy of anything in the game.

If you like supporting the rest of your party, I recommend Sigil Carver for paragon.

To pwn everything at epic, take either Archlich or Sage of Ages if you can optimize your Arcana skill hard enough.

I should say that Swordmage is one of the harder classes to pull really impressive tricks with. The big gimmicks they do have are amazing, but take a ton of work to pull off, and don't really go off until paragon.

[Anasazi]

Like the others are saying, swordmages have a pretty common build process, the teleporting swordmage works wonders but not until you really get up there in levels. As everyone else is focusing on straight builds, I thought I would play devils advocate and offer some hybrid suggestions.

If you want to be a master of battlefield control in the heroic teir, a swordmage|battlemind is a strong route to go.
Your primary scores would be INT and CON.
1st level hp: 15+con
hp per level: 6
healing surges per day: 8 + con mod
your innate armor would be straight leather, however, as all hybrids go you would want to take the hybrid character feat to allow either the use of the swordmage warding or the battleminds armor prof (scale and h.shields) depending on how you picture your eladrin, both options have their ups and downs.
As for marks, using your augment, you can effectively perm mark 3 targets (2 with battlemind, 1 with swordmage), the negatives alone to their hit will generally have them coming after you, which means you did an excellent job at keeping the majority of tagets off of your warlock buddy so he can sit back and nuke them all. Theres plenty of at will powers that give a temporary mark that you can boost that number up to 4 targets, assuming you hit.
Although mind spike is quite amusing and can do some decent damage, as a party of 3 your GM will probably be limiting how many people you have to kill and their overall hp, so blurred step is the better way to go. as the tank your job is to attract the attention of the targets on the field, its your strikers job to deal the real damage. And if you can keep them all bunched up together it works better for caster burst 1's and the like.
As for which aegis that works best, I would suggest shielding (assuming you put stats into CON which you will need to do to use any of the battlemind powers), this ensures that the target of your swordmage mark will do very minimal damage should it pull away from you. When it comes to the marks specifically, you'd want to mark your primary target with the swordmage aegis, and the secondaries with the battlemind marks (always blow the augment to mark multiples, unless theres less than 3 enemies on the board, or one of your targets would be a minion and your striker's init order is before his).

Hope this gives you a good idea for a hybrid route, I left alot of options open to you so that you can see that theres alot of movement room that can be easily changed to fit the character you had in mind.

[Coplantor]

Eladrin Swordmage has some of the best synergy of anything in the game.

If you like supporting the rest of your party, I recommend Sigil Carver for paragon.

To pwn everything at epic, take either Archlich or Sage of Ages if you can optimize your Arcana skill hard enough.

I should say that Swordmage is one of the harder classes to pull really impressive tricks with. The big gimmicks they do have are amazing, but take a ton of work to pull off, and don't really go off until paragon.

I was planning to go either demigod or archlich, they go with the character, plus, this being our first 4e campaign we want the characters to become part of the world we will be playing (it will be a relatively new world, with just a few gods and cities and large beasts roaming the wilderness)

The three of us will be rotating as DMs every now and then.

Where is the Sigil Carver? I wont get to the books till the weekend, but I dont recall that paragon path. :smallconfused:

@Anasazi::smalleek: Wow, that's a lot of info! Thanks! :smallbiggrin: BAttlemind might work well, this character is actually a 4ed version of my favourite 3.5 character, he was a gestalt swashbuckler wizard (I would've made him factotum wizard if I had dungeonscape when I first made him:smallannoyed:)

[DragonBaneDM]

Sage of Ages. Soooooo good for Swordmages!