How does Spell Rage work?

[weckar]

The Rage Mage PrC has a signature ability called Spell Rage. The idea behind it appears to be to allow you to cast spells in a barbarian rage.

The issue is that it appears to give you a separate pool of Spell Rages per day that are NOT related to your rages per day. The ability that allows you to cast in a rage, however, does not distinguish between the two. You also cannot activate them simultaneously (nor would you want to).

From my reading, the ONLY benefit of spell rage is to give you additional minor rages per day to trigger the other Rage Mage abilities, such as improved caster level and spell DC.

Is that really what this is about?

[Psyren]

Last sentence, first paragraph: "This ability only works when the rage mage is in a spell rage." They buried the lede a bit, but your normal rages from barbarian won't let you cast spells.

[KillianHawkeye]

Yeah, as I recall you have to use your normal rage and your spell rage at the same time.

[Falontani]

Throughout the class they seem to use rage and spell rage interchangeably.


A rage mage can only fly into a rage once per encounter, and only a certain number of times per day (determined by level). Entering a rage takes no time itself, but a rage mage can only do it during her action, not in response to somebody else's action.
This is either saying you can enter into a spell rage only once per encounter, or you can only enter into a single type of rage per encounter. I personally would rule the former, however the RAW seems to lean towards the second.

I think the best solution to this class would be to change spell rage to be a modifier of any rage you enter into, but that's not what this is.

Do remember since this is a type of rage, extra rage and extend rage count for this ability in addition to any other rages you may have.

[weckar]

Right. Not sure whether my reading comprehension or the writing.

Either way this makes it not very good..

[daremetoidareyo]

Right. Not sure whether my reading comprehension or the writing.

Either way this makes it not very good..

Unless you had rage from your race, say by being a badger hengeyokai? Then you could enter as a precocious apprentice duskblade at level 5.

White dragon lineage produces a type of "spell rage" for a 3rd level dragonblood sorcerer or a dragontouched/heritaged/ other class. So you could go battle sorcerer and be in the class by level 6, you better have an amazing spell selection though.

[weckar]

I'm not trying to optimize, really. Just trying to not completely cripple myself.

[ShurikVch]

Spell Rage was severely nerfed in 3.5: in 3.0, during the Spell Rage you could cast spells without expending slots (which wasn't broken at all, because Rage Mage had its own casting rather than progressing some other classes)