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mistformsquirrl
2013-12-07, 03:46 PM
Black Battlemage

Black Battlemages are among those few who take to both the ways of war and wizardry with equal gusto. They are by nature superb specimens of both intellect and physical strength; and each and every Black Battlemage is fully aware of this. A Black Battlemage wears his or her pride as a wizard might wear a robe – it is an identifier, something that signifies that the individual in question is not to be trifled with.

While universally arrogant, Black Battlemages are not all callous or purely self-serving; many serve as advisors arcane to organizations that require a strong hand in the field, such as a Knightly Order; others are nobles or even royalty in their own right who happen to have the particular knack for mastering both the arcane and physical arts.

Some Black Battlemages are little more than simple mercenaries who's significant personal power marks them out as a cut above the typical dogs of war; even these self-taught vagabonds bear the hubris of their kind, and as such their fees tend to be truly exorbitant. On the other hand, for the discerning employer it may well be worth it to direct enough raw power at a problem to make it go away – in which case it's money well spent.

Black Battlemages are so named as their fighting style resembles that of an ancient, long lost order of wizard-warriors from the mythic past. While today's Black Battlemages are not a part of this order, many have heard of it and take it to be a part of their discipline's lineage. Many go as far as to dye their armor black and trim it in gold, mimicking the Black Order's field livery. Others make a conscious effort to do something completely different to assert their own individual supremacy, but whether they like it or not, “Black” Battlemage is still the most common term used for this variety of spellsword.

{table=head]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special|1st|2nd|3rd|4th|5t h|6th|7th|8th|9th

1st|+0|+0|+0|+2| Etherblade, Armored Casting (Light)|0|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—

2nd|+1|+0|+0|+3| Arrogance |1|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—

3rd|+2|+1|+1|+3||1|0|—|—|—|—|—|—|—

4th|+3|+1|+1|+4| Bonus Feat |2|1|—|—|—|—|—|—|—

5th|+3|+1|+1|+4| Armored Casting (Medium)|2|1|0|—|—|—|—|—|—

6th|+4|+2|+2|+5||2|2|1|—|—|—|—|—|—

7th|+5|+2|+2|+5||3|2|1|0|—|—|—|—|—

8th|+6/+1|+2|+2|+6| Bonus Feat |3|2|2|1|—|—|—|—|—

9th|+6/+1|+3|+3|+6||3|3|2|1|0|—|—|—|—

10th|+7/+2|+3|+3|+7||3|3|2|2|1|—|—|—|—

11th|+8/+3|+3|+3|+7| Armored Casting (Heavy) |3|3|3|2|1|0|—|—|—

12th|+9/+4|+4|+4|+8| Bonus Feat |3|3|3|2|2|1|—|—|—

13th|+9/+4|+4|+4|+8||3|3|3|3|2|1|0|—|—

14th|+10/+5|+4|+4|+9||3|3|3|3|2|2|1|—|—

15th|+11/+6/+1|+5|+5|+9||3|3|3|3|3|2|1|0|—

16th|+12/+7/+2|+5|+5|+10| Bonus Feat |3|3|3|3|3|2|2|1|—

17th|+12/+7/+2|+5|+5|+10||3|3|3|3|3|3|2|1|0

18th|+13/+8/+3|+6|+6|+11||3|3|3|3|3|3|2|2|1

19th|+14/+9/+4|+6|+6|+11||3|3|3|3|3|3|3|2|2

20th|+15/+10/+5|+6|+6|+12| Supreme Arrogance |3|3|3|3|3|3|3|3|3

[/table]
Alignment: Any
Hit Die: 1d8

Class Skills:

The Black Battlemage's class skills are Craft (Int), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (All) (Int), Linguistics (Int), Profession (Wis), Spellcraft (Int)

Skill Points (2 + Int modifier)

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: Black Battlemages are proficient with all Armor, Simple and Martial Weapons, but not with Shields of any kind.

Armored Spellcasting: A Black Battlemage is necessarily a fusion of the arts of war and the arts of magic, and as such he or she never goes into combat unprepared for a potential physical confrontation.

A Black Battlemage may cast Black Battlemage spells in Light Armor without penalty, starting at level 1. Only spells granted by levels in Black Battlemage receive this benefit – all other arcane spells are subject to arcane spell failure as usual.

At level 5, a Black Battlemage may now wear Medium Armor and cast normally. At level 11, Heavy armor may now be donned without arcane spell failure.

Arrogance: A Black Battlemage is supremely confident in their own abilities, to a point that is actively insulting to anyone interacting with the Black Battlemage. Neutral and especially Evil Black Battlemages are actively disdainful of everyone not on equal footing with the Battlemage... which is essentially almost everyone else, including other Battlemages. As such, evil Black Battlemages are some of the most callous tyrants one could ever encounter – thinking quite literally nothing of throwing away the lives of their servants.

Good Black Battlemages tend to take a different, but no less haughty, approach to things. Typically they will set themselves up as stern parents and guardians – protectors of those weaker than themselves; which in the Battlemage's estimation includes most everyone.

Black Battlemages receive a -2 penalty to Diplomacy checks and a +1 to Will Saves as a result of their incredible personal pride. Every four levels thereafter, the penalty increases by -2, and the Will Save bonus increases by 1.

Bonus Feat: At 4th, 8th, 12th and 16th levels, the Black Battlemage recieves one Bonus Feat. This may be either a Combat Feat, Metamagic Feat, or Item Creation Feat.

Etherblade: While entirely capable of using mundane weapons, most Black Battlemages prefer to fight with a weapon made of raw magical force, known as an Etherblade. Despite the name, an Etherblade need not actually be a blade of any sort – it can resemble any one handed Simple, Martial or Exotic melee weapon. The form is chosen at 1st level and cannot be changed; if an Exotic weapon is chosen, the appropriate feat must be taken.

The weapon itself acts as a weapon of the chosen type, except that an Etherblade is automatically a Masterwork weapon and weighs nothing.

An Etherblade may be drawn as a move-equivelant action, or a free action with the Quick Draw feat; if disarmed or dropped, the Etherblade vanishes immediately and can be redrawn by the Black Battlemage.

An Etherblade is unique to the Black Battlemage who wields it; no one else may wield it, nor can it be given away or sold in any fashion.

An Etherblade may be enchanted by a Black Battlemage with the proper Item Creation feats, and the Black Battlemage receives a 25% discount when enchanting their own Etherblade.


Spells: The Black Battlemage learns and prepares spells as a Wizard, using the Wizard/Sorcerer list and using Intelligence to determine bonus spells and save DCs as well as requiring a spellbook. The Black Battlemage can cast fewer spells per day than a conventional Wizard however, and lacks the option to specialize, as they have to spend a not insignificant amount of time training their bodies as well as their minds.

Supreme Arrogance: Such is a master Black Battlemage's shear confidence in his or her own abilities that they can actually manifest this force of will to reflect hostile magics back at their source.

Any time a Black Battlemage is targeted by a single-target spell or an area-affect spell with the Black Battlemage at the center, the Black Battlemage is allowed to roll 1d20 with a bonus equal to their levels in Black Battlemage. If this roll beats the caster level of the incoming spell, that spell is reflected back to it's source as. A Scorching Ray for instance will rebound and instead strike it's caster rather than the Black Battlemage. This ability may be used once per day per point of Intelligence modifier the Black Battlemage possesses.

----------------

This is something I threw together after playing a battlemage in Skyrim wearing some spiffy modded black armor. It struck me that I'd really like to play the character in Pathfinder, but there wasn't anything that 'quite' did what I wanted it to do.

I'll note right up front: It's probably overpowered. I tried to balance it with the Wizard in mind* - but I haven't designed a class in a long, long time; and none of my previous efforts were any good. So I'm hoping for some feedback to kinda beat this one into shape so that it's actually usable and not *too* absurd.

I realize in some ways this resembles a Magus; but I wanted to go for something that was more "Caster in Armor that can fight (some)" rather than "Fighter that mixes spells into their attacks" - if that makes any sense.

Anyway, I hope you like the concept at least, even if the execution isn't perfect.

*My actual goal is something closer to the Sorcerer or even some of the higher Tier 3 classes - but I have distinct doubts that's really possible for a full casting armored spellcaster with decent BAB barring giving them absolutely no special abilities (which would be dull); so I decided to just do my best with what I had.

Ilorin Lorati
2013-12-07, 05:01 PM
I'm pretty sure you're right and that this is stronger than Wizard in most situations, especially if the wizard wanted to be gishy anyways. Basically, you've traded:


One spell per level per day
Specialization
one bonus feat (Scribe Scroll)
Arcane Bond


for:


Earlier and more flexible bonus feats
Increased HD/BAB
The ability to cast in armor
Martial Weapon Proficiency
A proper capstone
A weapon that seems to be better than the (admittedly a trap) bonded weapon.
a bonus to will saves (The penalty to a skill is negligible, especially since it's not one a wizard would usually take anyways)



I don't generally subscribe to the thought process that reducing spell preparations is enough to balance out additional class features, and in this case because of your increased melee ability you're freeing up a healthy chunk of slots for a mage that wants to do this from the standard melee buffs, essentially offsetting the reduction for several spell levels.

A couple things you could explore to try and resolve this could be:


A more limited (unique) spell list
Spontaneous casting
a fixed spell list


I dunno if any of these would help, though.

There's also a possible editing error: Cantrips aren't given their own section in the class table, which means as written they're not unlimited.

mistformsquirrl
2013-12-07, 05:05 PM
Whoops, screwed up the cantrips; I used a 3.5e class creator to put this together and forgot to edit them back out, I'll fix that shortly.

I appreciate the critique too, it's desperately needed. Going to collect some more feedback before I start fiddling with things; thank you!

Volfogg
2013-12-08, 02:28 AM
I rather like this overall. Its simple and interesting, however. I believe that inlcuding up to 9th level spells is a bit on the powerful side of things. I would simply limit them to 6th level spells and call it a day. With that change I would be willing to allow this class in my games.

Cheers
Volf

PS I think it would be interesting to come up with some etherblade feats, possibly one that would allow them to create a 2h weapon, one that would let them throw it, maybe one that would allow them to form it around a wand. That way the black battlemage would effectively be wielding a weapon and a wand in one hand.:smallcool:

mootoall
2013-12-08, 04:26 AM
Eeeeeeeeeh. A couple of design issues, ignoring balance for a bit.

Active abilities: There are virtually none of these. Combined with some other issues, this will make this class very boring to play. He can attack. He can cast spells a few times a day- let's say he uses a single spell of each appropriate level each battle. That's about it.

Synergy: There is no synergy between this class' abilities. He can cast. He can attack. They don't supplement each other. He can only do one at a time. He can buff himself and then attack, but that's all he's got going for him as far as ways to combine the two things he does. Maybe let him channel spells through attacks? Maybe let him add some damage to blasty spells based on his attacks? Maybe some entirely unique active ability, even.

Deliberate Handicaps: A general rule of class building-never attach specific penalties to balance out specific bonuses. Taking away a character's ability to be diplomatic in exchange for a boost in will saves does something very bad-it takes away an active option (basically being good any talking, period) for a passive bonus. This ties into critique one.

Once you've addressed those design problems, you'll have a more fun, exciting class.

Zman
2013-12-08, 04:47 PM
You've gotten quite a bit if good advice, this class is pretty much Wizard+. 9th level casting is too much, either you need a set spell list, or reduce it to 6th level casting at the least.

mistformsquirrl
2013-12-08, 06:47 PM
Alrighty, thanks all! I'll be doing some more work on this class soon and will update it then. I think I'm more likely to do a restricted spell list than I am to do a 6-level caster though; because I don't want this to feel like "Magus, but slightly different." which is what it would be I think otherwise.

Also, I think I'm going to ditch the Bonus Feats in favor of something a bit more active and interesting; though precisely what I'm uncertain of yet - I have a few ideas but I'm still batting them around.

The critique and advice is much appreciated everyone, thank you very much!