Recently finished PoE1 and am looking to start Deadfire. I've been playing around with the Battlemage Unbroken/Illusionist or Unbroken/Enchanter idea. I want to be a front line support/debuff/tank. Im open to other subclass combinations but really like the battlemage thematically. I also would like to play sword and board. Not trying to min max but what would my stat spread look like for a build like this and any recommended skills?

No subclass or blood mage is way to go bro. Trust me you ll be upset when you cannot cast some good spells later in your run if you go with that subclasses.

Wizard subclasses are fine if you look ahead and see what spells you're locked out of. You can always cover locked spells thru a companion/adventurer. But if Illusionist is what you wanted, a trickster Rogue for multiclass gets several Illusion spells for free that cost Guile to cast and you have all the base Rogue abilities that can debuff enemies. It's only a 10% downgrade in sneak atk dmg compared to no subclass. Rogue and Fighter both have options to displace themselves/enemies/allies and between Fighter stances and Rogue passives, you can contribute dps easily.

Skills are gonna be whatever you prefer. Athletics is a cheap heal option, Arcana if you want to use scrolls to get more of the battlemage vibe. Explosives can be nice on a Fighter because they get buffed by the hit conversion bonus they get so soon.

The combination Unbroken/Wizard is especially fun imo if you are able to cast Ryngrim's Repulsing Visage and Ryngrim's Evervating Terror*. Illusionist covers that (sine both spells are Illusions), but the Enchanter subclass will make you lose access to all Illusions spells, including both Ryngrim spells. Besides that there are also several Illusion spells which provide nice defense bonuses.

So I personally would not pick Enchanter. Illusionist would be cool with me, but honestly I would rather pick the Bloodmage subclass because the combination of Constant Recovery and later Unbeding with Blood Sacrifice (get back spells, pay with health) is pretty neat. You cannot use the Empower mechanic then, but in my experience players new to Deadfire forget about Empower anyway (or don't forget about it but try to save its uses for the perfect time - which seldomly comes because you have no meta knowledge yet). ;)

Your attributes could be pretty balanced. I woudn't go below 10 with any and put a focus on INT, PER and RES. PER mostly because if you play with official companions, most of them have not very high PER - and PER is what determines whether you discover traps and secrets in Deadfire (NOT Mechanics like in PoE - in Deadfire Mechanics is only for opening doors and containers and disarming traps). INT for your spells and RES for more dialogue options and higher deflection as well as shorter hostile effects on you.

If you pick a Bloodmage there's benefit in picking the human race - because you can regain spells with health (Blood Sacrifice) you might get bloodied in the process. You can use that to unlock the human "Fighting Spirit" passive (higher accuracy, more damage output). If you pick Illusionist it's not that important which race you pick imo.

There's a cool and rel. early large shield for a Battlemage

spoiler: name of item

named "Cadhu Scalth"

which scales some of its defensive enchantments with Athletics (active skill) and Metaphysics (passive skill). It's best to skill those two from the beginning if you plan to use that shield. But you could also retrain with some money when you find it and decide to use it.

)* the reason is that both spells terrify enemies. And terrified enemies will crouch down and move around randomly, potentially triggering free disengagement attacks (if you had engaged them in the first place). The Unbroken has paritculary strong disengagment attacks to that's a nice synergy.

Edited 1 hour ago1 hr by Boeroer