Battle Scion

[hoborobot]

i was looking around charecters in pathfinder, and came upon this http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/3rd-party-classes/kobold-press-open-design/battle-scion

it seems like a really good class, full bob, d10, proficient in all but tower shield can cast arcane spells without penalty when wearing ANY armor, draws from wizard/sorcerer list. am i missing the downside to this guy?

[Sir_Thaddeus]

The biggest drawback I see is that it's third-party. Many, if not most, tables wouldn't allow it.

Other than that, slightly low caster level, and the fact that the spell list doesn't go very high - fourth-level paladin spells are designed for a 14th-level paladin, but fourth-level sorc/wiz spells are designed for 7th- or 8th-level casters. So, the spells may not be as useful as one might imagine. And you get rather few of them.

Also, as anyone who's played a 3.5e game as a Hexblade will tell you, casting in armour and having a full BAB aren't all that great. You need good class features. Most of the Battle Scion things seem to be fairly lackluster (8d4 ray at 19th/20th level?), apart from Spell Tactician, post-13th level - metamagic reduction is powerful, but I'd call it balanced due to its limited uses/day. It could possibly be used in an overpowered way, but wizards and sorcerers have better tools with which to break the game.

Past the flaws, it seems potentially fun, and somewhat balanced - about on par with the paladin, maybe a little better. I would play one, if I could get third-party content permitted at a table I play at.

[hoborobot]

apparently so far the table is going to be all 3rd party, warlord, battle scion and some other yet to be named class i assume some sort of ponyfinder monk