Duskblade Question...

[Starsinger]

So, I was thinking about Duskblades and arcane archers.. and it occurred to me. How bad would it be to allow a Duskblade to use Spell Channel with a bow instead of a melee weapon?

[Nebo_]

More powerful, to be sure, but not overpowered.

My group used this as a fix for a weak class that's in the Iron Kingdoms campaign setting: the Gunmage, but with guns instead of bows.

[KillianHawkeye]

I saw a post here the other day about changing Arcane Archer to a Duskblade PrC by doing exactly that. They also gave it half casting and changed some other abilities from 1/day to +Spell Slot.

It seemed pretty good to me.

[Hal]

It does result in some strange synergy. Duskblades have a number of rays on their spell list, so the switchover to archery would make those spells more or less irrelevant. They're generally ignored anyhow, but they'd be even MORE useless for a class that already is limited in its choices.

I guess the only risk is that you suddenly have spells that are touch range only reaching as far as you can fire your bow. Imagine suddenly being able to paralyze someone from 100 ft. away. At 3rd level, 3d6 electric damage from that distance is going to be hard to deal with.

[skywalker]

DO IT!

It seriously won't be that big a deal.

As long as you don't have a player that likes to completely break things, or anything.

[Squash Monster]

You can already get a poor-man's version of what you're talking about with a two-level dip into Bloodstorm Blade.

It really shouldn't be bad for balance. Very few of the Duskblade spells do anything that can't be done at range somehow already.

[Kantolin]

Welp, let's see. The only potentially unfair portion is that it lets you do touch attack-spells at range instead of in melee. Touch attack spells (that aren't buffs) are as follows:

0: Touch of Fatigue
1: Chill Touch, Shocking Grasp
2: Ghoul Touch, Touch of Idiocy
3: Dispelling Touch, Vampiric Touch
4: Toxic Weapon?
5: Huh, none of them.

That's... actually a lot less than I figured.

Anyway, Touch of fatigue at range doesn't seem terribly relevant. Touch of Idiocy is a little nicer to do without going up to stand in the wizard's face, but that doesn't seem too powerful.

The only one that's a little nice is dispelling touch from range - but it comes at the time when everyone else would have dispel magic.

That said, it really doesn't seem like it'd be any more powerful - just typical range v melee differences.

[Starsinger]

stuff

Huh, those don't seem too terribly bad I don't suppose. The person interested in this isn't really the type to abuse things like touch of idiocy anyways. (He likes his blasts, but wanted a viable arcane archer and this seemed like the perfect fix)