Potential House-Rule/Feat for Gish in 3.5

[RelentlessImp]

I've always enjoyed playing a good Gish character; but I always feel constrained (especially in PbP games) by the "cast a spell, attack next round" style of play.

To that end, I thought up the following house-rule/feat:

Art of the Battle-Mage
Requirements: BAB +6, ability to cast spells 0th-level or higher
You can sacrifice your first attack in a full attack action to cast a spell requiring a standard action, then take your secondary attacks immediately afterwards. Ex.: A level 20 Cleric with a BAB +15/+10/+5 can choose to cast divine power as part of a full attack action, giving up his first attack at +15, then take two attacks at BAB +10/+5.

Thoughts?

[Spiryt]

It seems to me that it will break the Clerics and the Druids even more in the first place. :smallannoyed:


"cast a spell, attack next round"

Round is after all 6 seconds, and number of thing a PC can do in that time is anyway big. It's just logical that you can't do everything at once.

Maybe it could pass as a feat, but with some more bitchy requirements, I would say.

[AstralFire]

I don't like it for the same reason Spiryt outlined. Maybe if it was restricted to Arcane casting only, but even then, I dunno. (Especially since a lot of Rangers and Paladins could benefit from this).

The Arcane Strike feat outlined in C. War already did a lot for that feel of gish, so I would stick to that + Quicken and Still spell, personally. Though I really like gishes, fixes for them tend to need to be more elaborate; Duskblade, Jade Phoenix Mage and Ruby Knight Vindicator are excellent looks at it, being fairly balanced against other Gish PrCs, hard to outright break but easy to turn something nice out with, and with some imagination.

[The Demented One]

Maybe if it were a metamagic feat, something along the lines of:

Martial Spell [Metamagic]
You can blend spellcasting and martial prowess.
Requirements: Quicken Spell, Spellcraft 8 ranks, BAB +8
Benefits: Whenever you make a full attack, you may choose to not make the first attack at your highest base attack bonus, and to instead cast a martial spell as a swift action. A spell with a casting time is more than one standard action cannot have the martial spell feat applied to it. A martial spell uses up a spell slot two levels higher than the spell’s actual level. A martial spell ignores arcane spell failure from armor, and casting one does not provoke an attack of opportunity.

Not quite sure about the level adjustment, but I think it's fine.

[AstralFire]

that seems a lot better, I would just change it to be any full-round attack action. Charging Meteor Swarm!

[Zeta Kai]

I like the Demented One's feat better, although I think the SL only needs to be 1 level higher. That way, both the attack & the spell are properly taxed in roughly equal measure.

[TeeEl]

I think this would work better if it were more along the lines of a class feature, either for a new PrC (or give it to the upper levels of a subpar gish PrC somewhere) and/or an automatic ability for half-casters (ranger/paladin/hexblade/blackguard/assassin etc.).