swashbuckler gish?

[tannish2]

i heard about this somewhere, seems like a good idea any suggestions for how to not lose so many caster levels and BAB? at what level does it become viable? anyway, any info you can give me would be happy.

[JackMage666]

Abjurant Champion, in the Complete Mage, appears to be pretty popular for Gish Builds. Full Spellcasting, and Full BAB. Capstone ability replaces CL with BAB, so if your BAB is higher than your Wizard level, your CL is better.

[Darrin]

i heard about this somewhere, seems like a good idea any suggestions for how to not lose so many caster levels and BAB? at what level does it become viable? anyway, any info you can give me would be happy.

What you really want out of Swashbuckler is Precise Strike to add your Int bonus to damage. The best way to gish Wiz/Swash, off the top of my head, and rebuild your caster levels would be something like:

Wiz 5/Bard 1/Swash 3/Eldritch Knight 1/Sublime Chord 1/Eldritch Knight 9.

But yeah, BAB suffers a bit.

[kme]

Do you mean a swashbuckler class or swashbuckler flavor or swashbuckler-like abilities?

[Talya]

Swashbuckler also mixes well with Beguiler, too, as far as pure Gish types go. Thing is, you never want more than 3 levels of Swashbuckler anyway. The class is useful for those three levels, then you move out of it.

[Fax Celestis]

Swashbucker 3/Duskblade 3/Warblade 1/Jade Phoenix Mage 10/Eldritch Knight 3 is very solid, very Int-dependent, and--all-in-all--a strong gish.

[Dr. Weasel]

I threw this onto the earlier thread, but this seems to be the active one. So... You'll need three levels to justify taking the class in the first place. You also have the issue of armored casting.

So the primary intelligence based casters (as a starting point):
Beguiler
Duskblade
Wizard
Psion
Psychic Rogue

Beguiler will go first because it actually might work well, though you'd be more of a skill-guy than a real gish. Six levels would get you free-action feinting and Arcane Strike on top of Insightful Strike would get you some damage output, but your spells would allow you to avoid combat in most situations.

Duskblade would make Swashbuckler fairly superfluous as it already has a pretty good damage output and the dip will hurt, pushing spell levels even further back. This actually might be a decent idea just for simplicity's sake, but a Duskblade with Weapon Finesse would fill the role just as well (if not better).

Wizard will be your standard go-to. Swashbuckler 3/Wizard 4/Abjurant Champion 5/[Eldrich Knight/Knight Phantom] 8 would be simple and moderately effective. There are better builds, but this provides the skeleton of the concept.

In each of these cases, you'll want Arcane Strike since it does good things for your damage.

Psion would be interesting, particularly Egoists. You could probably go Swashbuckler 3/Egoist 2/Slayer 10 (It's sort of cheesy with its Mind-Flayer focus, but it is good)/Egoist 5 (at this point Base attack and the like don't matter as much as milking your Manifester levels).

Psychic Rogue would be interesting. I don't know how good it would be, but it could be neat. PsyRogue 1/Swashbuckler 3/PsyRogue 16 could be nice if you focused on two-weapon fighting. Again, though, Swashbuckler doesn't do much to improve the rest of the build.

Egoist/Slayer or Wizard/Abjurant Champion/Eldrich Knight would probably be your best bets. They're just a frame though. If someone had the proper books and time, I'm sure they could show these up quite well.

[SadisticFishing]

Swashbuckler 3/Wizard 3/Abjurant Champion 3/Swiftblade 10/Abjurant Champion +1 (4) is pretty good as a gish. You lose some caster levels, but get a lot out of your int.

[Dr. Weasel]

Oh, Swiftblade. I forgot about that one. I second what SadisticFishing said.

[Edit:] Actually, I think you need another Wizard level before Abjurant Champion, but basically its good.

[Mr. Moogle]

It is in the complete arcane its a feat called "practied spellcaster" its perfect for gishing.

[tannish2]

well i knew the basics i just couldnt think of how to do it without losing either 4 caster levels or 2 BAB (without using far too many feats of course)

[Solo]

i heard about this somewhere, seems like a good idea any suggestions for how to not lose so many caster levels and BAB?

Find a way to get Divine Power on your spell list. Then you won't have to worry about BAB.

Arcane Disciple is a way to get the spells of a domain on your class list provided that you can have a high enough Wisdom to cast the spell.

Good Luck.

[Dr. Weasel]

The Swiftblade (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070327) class SadisticFishing mentioned is definitely worth looking into. It loses caster levels but does so well; it gains you actions and combat bonuses which easily make up for two lost base attack and even make you potent with only 13 caster levels; maybe even more so than some of the near-full spellcasting gish builds.

[Person_Man]

I'm not a fan of a Swash Gish. You lose caster levels in exchange for Weapon Finesse and Int to damage, minor bonuses that really can't compare to similar levels of Duskblade, Abjurant Champion, etc.

[Kurald Galain]

Depends on what you want with a Gish - do you want a caster who can also fight, or a fighter who can also cast?

The classic fighter 1 / wizard 5 / eldritch knight is more like the former. Doing, say, barbarian 1 / wizard 1 / human paragon 3 / wizard +2 / eldritch knight gives you more hit points and a strength boost at the expense of a caster level, thus bringing it closer to the latter.