Arcane gishes vs. Psionic gishes

[danielxcutter]

As title. Including gish-in-a-can classes as well.

[noce]

As the title? Title says nothing.


Do you have any idea about how many base classes and how many prestige classes could be defined arcane or psionic gishes?

Base classes: Duskblade, Hexblade, Bard, Battle Sorcerer, Spellthief, Factotum, Warlock, Lurk, Psychic Rogue, Psychic Warrior, Ardent, Divine Mind, Wilder.

These are a lot of base classes, let alone prestige classes.

Could you be more specific?

[Tiri]

What do you even want to compare about the two? You're being remarkably unspecific.

[PrismCat21]

One seems to be primarily arcane.
One seems to be primarily psionic.
Was there a question?

[danielxcutter]

Mostly the strengths and weaknesses compared to each other. Which is easier to play, which has more mechanical power, which deals more damage per round... That kind of stuff.

I'm sorry for being ambiguous. Unintentional, but still a mistake.

[Soranar]

I would say psionic gishes are superior in general and so for a few reasons:

-psionic powers don't care about armor or shields
-even low level psionic powers can be augmented to replicate high level spells and these effects are usually beneficial to a gish (expansion, armor spells, lion's charge, combat insight offensive /defensive)
-any power list can gain any power through expanded power for which there is no arcane equivalent
-all psionic manifesters have full manifester level

in comparison an arcane gish

-needs class features for armor
-have many meaningless spells at higher levels that don't scale well
-often have half caster levels

[Psyren]

Arcane is hampered out of the gate by the two sides being at odds (melee wants armor, armor interferes with arcane.) But, arcane also has the most support out of any magic system in the game, so it ends up being a toss-up.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Psionics does tend to have better action economy, which helps gish out a lot...

[ExLibrisMortis]

There aren't many specific gish classes for psions. Slayer, Sanctified Mind - that's it. Arcane magic has a lot more support, including easy persistomancy - look at Spelldancer, Incantatrix - and good full-bab casting classes - look at Spellsword, Abjurant Champion, Swiftblade.


That said, there are a lot of good psionic effects, and for any arcane gish, you can probably come up with a psionic gish that'll perform about as well.

[danielxcutter]

Hmmm... Which is easier to play then?

[Dagroth]

Hmmm... Which is easier to play then?

Depends on which casting system you're more familiar with. I would be better off with a Divine Gish, for example, since I've spent a lot of time looking at Cleric/Druid/Ranger/Paladin spells... And I don't know the ins and outs of Psionics beyond the basics.

[Particle_Man]

There aren't many specific gish classes for psions. Slayer, Sanctified Mind - that's it.

What about Psychic Warrior?

[Grod_The_Giant]

What about Psychic Warrior?
And the Ardent. Heck, you can drop a couple levels dipping martial classes and still get full casting progression using Ardent.

[noce]

Hmmm... Which is easier to play then?

The easiest builds to play are those with fewer available customization.

I'd say that Duskblade is remarkably easy to play: it has a small spell list and works perfectly fine as a pure class.
Out of combat you lack the versatility of other gishes: for example, a battle sorcerer can pick teleport.
On the other hand, in combat a Duskblade is top performing, with tons of spells per day to fuel feats like Arcane Strike, and the INT synergy to fuel Knowledge Devotion.

If I had to pick a strong and easy to play/build gish, I'd go Duskblade.
Pure Duskblade can work, although obviously you can improve with the right prestige classes.

Take a look at http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?321715-The-Gish-Handbook for suggestions.

[ExLibrisMortis]

What about Psychic Warrior?

And the Ardent.
Well, primus, I said "for psions" so I'm technically correct (which is the best kind of correct!), and secundus, you're right, I didn't mention them all. It doesn't change that psionics have way fewer gish options (they have good ones, maybe higher average quality, but fewer overall). Just for the psywar and ardent (and War Mind I suppose, though it's so-so), I can provide duskblade and stalwart battle sorcerer and Suel Arcanamach and bard and Jade Phoenix Mage and [deep breath] steel spellhoarding loredrake and Sword of the Arcane Order and Knight of the Weave and ... as examples of arcane options. Oh, and Heartfire Fanner maybe.

[ZamielVanWeber]

And the Ardent. Heck, you can drop a couple levels dipping martial classes and still get full casting progression using Ardent.

Depending on how you manage to manipulate your mantles with the one ACF ardent can make an amazing gish, especially since you lose so little for entering slayer.

Psionic gishes tend to be a lot less work out of the can and tend to come online far sooner.

[Gruftzwerg]

IMHO the question still ain't specific enough to give a clear answer.
While the number of available Psionic build is limited by the small number of psionic classes, on the arcane side, the number of possible builds and classes that might be used is not countable anymore.

Most people here seem to forget about warlocks when they talk about arcane gishes.

warlocks are the easiest to play (many 24h buffs), have the best action economy (cause they don't need to buff up at the start of a fight) and can get some decent damage/round. But easy to play also means simple and not to many options to do something.

Imho the question is still to wide spread to give clear answers. Especially the arcane side is to big to make a simple comprehension.

[WhamBamSam]

Hmmm... Which is easier to play then?Probably a Psi-Gish, as they have more obvious options as far as moving and full attacking (Hustle, Psionic Lion's Charge, Dimension Hop) and not losing caster levels (Ardent), which are really the most important fundamentals of conventional Gishing.

Arcane Gishing requires navigating through at least somewhat more obscure PrCs and spells to get the result you want. I generally prefer going this route with my gishes though, as I firmly believe that Gishing is about style above all else, so I generally favor the broader splat support that arcane magic gets, and the weirdness it allows for.

[danielxcutter]

IMHO the question still ain't specific enough to give a clear answer.
While the number of available Psionic build is limited by the small number of psionic classes, on the arcane side, the number of possible builds and classes that might be used is not countable anymore.

Most people here seem to forget about warlocks when they talk about arcane gishes.

warlocks are the easiest to play (many 24h buffs), have the best action economy (cause they don't need to buff up at the start of a fight) and can get some decent damage/round. But easy to play also means simple and not to many options to do something.

Imho the question is still to wide spread to give clear answers. Especially the arcane side is to big to make a simple comprehension.

Well, usually people interpret "arcane" as having literal spells, not the invocations Warlocks and DFA's get. Warlock does make a fine gish though.

As for the original question... Yeah, there's a huge difference between gish-in-a-can classes and multiclass benchmark builds. Mostly I was wondering about combination gishes, but the pre-packed ones also have significant differences, perhaps even more than multiclass ones. I think comparing similar builds is best - canned to canned, assembled to assembled.


Probably a Psi-Gish, as they have more obvious options as far as moving and full attacking (Hustle, Psionic Lion's Charge, Dimension Hop) and not losing caster levels (Ardent), which are really the most important fundamentals of conventional Gishing.

Arcane Gishing requires navigating through at least somewhat more obscure PrCs and spells to get the result you want. I generally prefer going this route with my gishes though, as I firmly believe that Gishing is about style above all else, so I generally favor the broader splat support that arcane magic gets, and the weirdness it allows for.

That is why most of us like playing those, true. :smallbiggrin: Psionic gishes are just as - perhaps even more - powerful than arcanists, but spells can do some unique things manifesters can only dream of, such as Thunderlance, Bladeweave, or Persistent Wraithstrike. It depends on what you can use and more importantly, what you want.