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skywalker
2007-06-18, 01:45 AM
A friend of mine who is notorious for his sub-par builds is thinking of bringing a janni warmage into our group to replace a recently deceased character. I have seen people talk before about the warmage being sub-par, but no one has ever said why. I am not exactly up on how the classes interact so more explanation would be better. I'm looking to give him some advice because we've never played full-blown D&D where people die without access to raise dead before and he's already lost one character.

So tell me, is a janni(which is LA +5) with 2 levels of warmage a good idea for a 7th level campaign?

Further, I would like to know exactly what is wrong with the warmage.

Thank you.

sleeping fishy
2007-06-18, 02:05 AM
ummm... your serious?? lol... ok, here goes, ill try, even tho im a noob here

1st, jann have 6 outsider hd before la+5, so a djann is a lvl 11 char even before any class levels... so he cant play one at lvl 7!

2nd, even if he could, warmage 2 at level 7 can do... what?? cast magic missile?? oh, omg, 1d4+1 dmg, oh no!! a human warmage could cast like a 7d6 fireball... a human wizard could cast fear or confusion or something... he wont be able to hurt anything at all...

oh yeah if your ignoring the outsider lvls then hell have LVL 2 HP IN A LVL 7 GROUP... he will die in ONE SHOT by ANYTHING!


as for warmages, theyre pretty ok at damage, especially if you twink them w/ feats and such... but even tho they wear armor their still weak, low hp... and they dont have any defense spells, not even fly... so monsters can eat them... and all they can do is damage... a barb could do that just as good, or better... so they cant really do anything besides throw damage at monsters, and in exchange their weak & have none of the rly good spells in the game...

if your friend really wants to play a warmage jann then like, forget the outsider lvls & cut his la down to +2 or 3, then take away his plane shift... maybe hell be able to actually do something...

TheOOB
2007-06-18, 02:08 AM
Warmages arn't weak, they just are incapable of performing the tasks required of an arcane casters. Arcane casters are about control and utility, which a warmage doesn't have. Warmages are more like archers, dealing damage from the back row.

As for the build, all I have to say is that LA and Hit Dice do not mix with spellcasting, period.

Jack Mann
2007-06-18, 02:08 AM
Warmages aren't casters. You have to understand that to understand the problem. They cast spells, sure, but not very good spells, generally. They're really archers.

Damage spells are, in general, very poor. They don't do as much damage as a well-built fighter or cleric. It's exciting rolling a handful of d6s, but it doesn't actually accomplish all that much. Real casters have things like save-or-dies, save-or-sucks, and battlefield control spells. Sure, you can the mob of mooks with your fireball. Or cast haste and boost the fighter well enough that he can tear through them. Or hold them in place with a battlefield control spell, so you can kill them at your leisure. Or realize that all of them are weak enough that they will hardly scratch your combatants, negating the need to waste spell slots on them.

Warmages get mostly spells of this variety. They get a couple of good spells, like Evard's black tentacles, but mostly it's fireball and its ilk. The handful of spells they get from advanced learning don't help much, largely because these have to be evocation spells. Evocation is the weakest school, largely because it focuses on damage-dealing spells.

So if you're a warmage, you're not filling a caster role. You have no utility, barely any battlefield control, nothing but blasting. What you are is an archer. Not a great archer, at that. But if you're willing to focus on that role, you can be... adequate.

However, a warmage with only first level spells at level 7... No. Bad idea. Very bad idea. Any LA +5 race is a bad idea at level 7 (or just about any level), because you have preposterously low hit points and saving throws. Your class features are non-existent. Your friend will die. Let him understand that. He will be incredibly fragile at this point and won't be able to contribute very much to the party's well-being.

Of course, there's another problem. Racial hit dice. You can't just ignore those. A janni, before taking any class levels, is an 11th-level character. So it's impossible, even if it was somehow a good idea.

skywalker
2007-06-18, 02:27 AM
The hit dice and level advancement thing is not something understood very well by me or any of my friends. Thanks. That was not clear to me before. I'm not entirely sure our DM gets it, because he's been letting another guy run around with a minotaur(which, if I'm doing my newly learned math correctly, adds up to level 8 base) with fighter levels stacked on top of that, in a level 7 campaign.

Thanks for clearing up exactly why warmages aren't the greatest choice, and why the janni warmage was a horrible idea. I knew it was a horrible idea, I just couldn't put my finger on exactly why.


Thanks again.