The gish and the cool magic

[Hamenaglar]

Hi,

 

My name is Hamenaglar. If you can't see my pointy ears, then you should know I'm an elf. But I'm no ordinary elf. I'm the true elf, the proper elf, blending magic and swordplay into one. Yes, I'm a gish (completely ignoring that the word gish comes from githyanki... *dramatic pause* or is it githzerai). Now for those of you that don't know what a gish is, I'll just say we are the cool version of wizards. While wizards and mages study in their libraries and are losing their eyesight buried under tomes, we (the gish) are out there doing the cool stuff and having fun. Some cool examples of a gish are Duskblade and Bladesinger in DnD and Magus in Pathfinder. Eldritch knight is just a wizard wannabe and isn't that cool. Arcane warrior in DA:O is another bad Gish.

 

Now, just like a wizard a gish is also using magic, but in a different way. Gish will usually wear armor and fight in melee using his magic to buff himself or to kill his enemies. But to do that in a cool way a Gish should use spells designed for that. For example channeling spell through his sword, casting spell with his left hand while striking with sword in the right. Basically spell and sword should work as a team.

 

Now, I'm aware that mages in PE can wear armor. That's cool. I'm also aware that there is a bard class, which sometimes may be a bit gishy. There might also be options for multiclassing. What I would like to ask from Mr. Josh Sawyer is to design spells and feats (or combat abilities) to allow that union between spell and sword (or axe if you are a dwarf).

 

Cheers

Hamenaglar, the Elf Gish?

 

P.s. Dear moderator that will be approving my post. I'm not sure what the guidelines for approving posts, but if you decide not to approve it because there are topics where it belongs more, can you please notify me of this, so that I can post in a more appropriate location. Thanks.

[tajerio]

Gishing is my favorite way to play any D&D based game.  Given what Josh has said about classes' varying capabilities, I think gishing should be completely viable in P:E, but if the devs are down for giving it some extra love I support that wholeheartedly.

[Hamenaglar]

Gishing is my favorite way to play any D&D based game.  Given what Josh has said about classes' varying capabilities, I think gishing should be completely viable in P:E, but if the devs are down for giving it some extra love I support that wholeheartedly.

 

I would love to see some gish-specific options. For example a special mode, that allows casting and attacking with melee weapon at the same time. Or an ability to turn memorized spells into raw magic and then delivering it through sword as an extra bonus damage. Perhaps sacrificing spell slots in exchange for bonust to hit and damage. In d&d there are lots of cool options for a gish. Unfortunately in CRPGS I haven't seen many. Eldritch knight was in NWN 2, but that is just a wizard with a full BAB. In DA:O there was arcane warrior, but that was just a mage in heavy armor. I'm just hoping we can come to some cool ideas for gish options.

[anubite]

I like the idea of buffing sword attacks. Tactics Ogre has this, with the ninja class. You can spend a turn to empower your weapon with silence, poison, immobilize, et cetera. Being able to empower a generic spell onto your weapon would be a neat ability. Don't put any restrictions on it, and you'll see a lot of creative builds arise (Summon minions on attack? Party buff on attack? Maybe a teleport spell on a attack?). Of course, there would be penalties with it, such as reduced damage, chance to proc or something.

 

Being able to use a mage-y stat as a warrior-y stat is one obvious passive skill, "50% of your intelligence is added onto your strength on critical attacks" or something. Of course, who knows how PE will do attributes at this point.

 

I really haven't played a cRPG to properly do weapon summoning. That is, a magic weapon is always inferior to one you buy in a store. Something "gishy" might be a certain anime character's ability (

)... a spell which lets you call forth a specific, historical weapon (a "noble", soulful blade instead of some generic construct of magic). A mechanic idea I had a long time ago, based on this idea, was that once you fought a particular enemy, you could conjure their weapon. Be it a boss or a lowly nobody's blade, you could memorize it and it might have a situational effect you want for later on in the game. Edited July 30, 2013 by anubite

[Micamo]

Gishes are extremely popular as a character concept, so it'd be pretty criminal if Obsidian ignored it. That said, my advice is that Obsidian consider all four types of gishes:

 

First, the gish who merges their weapon and their spells to perform both roles at the same time, with the same actions (e.g. Spellstrike and Spell Combat).

 

Second, the gish who casts spells at the start of combat to soften the enemy up, then takes out their weapon to finish them off.

 

Third, the gish who uses their spellcasting as a way to improve and augment their primary function as a melee character (focusing on self buffing).

 

Fourth, the gish who uses their weapon and armor training to improve their ability to control the battlefield and debilitate enemies for allies to deal with (e.g. focusing on close-quarter lockdown with reach weapons).

 

IIRC the current design is that the Priest has the third type covered, though it'd be nice if an Arcane version were available as well.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

IIRC the current design is that the Priest has the third type covered, though it'd be nice if an Arcane version were available as well.

I don't see why not, Haste will more than likely be a wizard spell.

[Micamo]

 

IIRC the current design is that the Priest has the third type covered, though it'd be nice if an Arcane version were available as well.

I don't see why not, Haste will more than likely be a wizard spell.

 

Unless a spell list was released while I wasn't looking, there's no guarantee haste will even be in the game, let alone that it'll be the encounter-shattering uberbuff it was in D&D 3E. AFAIK we don't know how good wizard buffing is intended to be, or how nice it'll play with gishing.

[Walsingham]

I hate to say it, but In England 'gish' is a rude word. Albeit, given you're an elf, an appropriately insulting one.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Unless a spell list was released while I wasn't looking, there's no guarantee haste will even be in the game, let alone that it'll be the encounter-shattering uberbuff it was in D&D 3E. AFAIK we don't know how good wizard buffing is intended to be, or how nice it'll play with gishing.

 

 

We have a 3rd level Haste-ish spell.  It will not be as gnarly as it is in 3E/3.5.

 

In my current Pathfinder campaign, I removed the extra attack from Haste entirely and the party still casts it all the time.  It's that good.

[bonarbill]

 

Now, just like a wizard a gish is also using magic, but in a different way. Gish will usually wear armor and fight in melee using his magic to buff himself or to kill his enemies. But to do that in a cool way a Gish should use spells designed for that. For example channeling spell through his sword, casting spell with his left hand while striking with sword in the right. Basically spell and sword should work as a team.

 

 

So in other words, a D&D cleric?

[Micamo]

 

Unless a spell list was released while I wasn't looking, there's no guarantee haste will even be in the game, let alone that it'll be the encounter-shattering uberbuff it was in D&D 3E. AFAIK we don't know how good wizard buffing is intended to be, or how nice it'll play with gishing.

 

We have a 3rd level Haste-ish spell.  It will not be as gnarly as it is in 3E/3.5.

 

Nice: As a quick question, how fast do spell levels advance? Every odd number like in D&D, or some other progression?

 

So in other words, a D&D cleric?

Not quite: A cleric buffs themselves the first couple of rounds of combat before starting to attack (type 3). The main problem with this strategy is that buffs have diminishing returns because every round you spend buffing is a round you aren't attacking: Spend too much time and the rest of the party will have beaten the encounter without you (potentially at great expense) and the spells will go to waste. This is why smart players use DMM to stack on a bunch of all-day buffs and avoid the problem completely.

 

What he's talking about is type 1 gishing, putting a frigid touch onto your sword attack or casting True Strike and then firing your bow on the same round.

[Hamenaglar]

 

So in other words, a D&D cleric?

 

 

No. I'm talking about duskblades, baldesingers, magi (pathfinder). As Micame put it well, the idea isn't to stand there and do basically nothing except buffing yourself. From my experience playing Pathfinder, if you spend 3 rounds buffing yourself in combat, by that time somebody is going to be dead. Either the bad guy, or one of your friends. The idea is that your melee abilities work together with arcane abilities. Not as two separate entities but rather as a team.

 

Unlike a gish, cleric is focused a lot on buffing. Gish should be able to buff himself and cast good damage dealing spells as well as fight in melee. Ofcourse, he should lose some of the versatilty of the wizard.

 

In essence, I'd say cleric is defensive, while gish is offensive.

 

Micame also explained well other variants of gishes.

 

 

 

 

We have a 3rd level Haste-ish spell.  It will not be as gnarly as it is in 3E/3.5.

 

In my current Pathfinder campaign, I removed the extra attack from Haste entirely and the party still casts it all the time.  It's that good.

 

Really? A wizard in our Pathfinder campaign always complains about nerfing of haste and that it no longer provides an extra standard action. In the campaign I'm playing, the only really benefit of the haste spell is that extra attack. We have a spell dancer, monk, wizard teleporting at will, so that extra movement isn't that important. Heroism beats haste in terms of bonuses, although heroism is one person, while haste is party buff. While I can see how haste can still be very useful spell even without extra attack, I think it also depends on the party composition.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Hamenaglar

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I wonder how something like Spell Combat or Spell Strike would function in a cRPG? While I would love to see something similar implemented, I worry that it way be too complicated to implement outside of turn-based.

 

I hate to say it, but In England 'gish' is a rude word. Albeit, given you're an elf, an appropriately insulting one.

Well played.

[Hamenaglar]

I wonder how something like Spell Combat or Spell Strike would function in a cRPG? While I would love to see something similar implemented, I worry that it way be too complicated to implement outside of turn-based.

 

If we are talking about pathfinder Spell Combat and Spell Strike, I think they could be implemented quite easily as a combat mode. When you are in spell combat mode, your character makes strange arcing attacks. If you decide to cast a spell, those arcing attacks will attack the enemy, but at the same time provide somatic component. Or alternatively spell combat could be used as a metamagic modifier (much like quicken) where you can apply to any spell at the time of casting and that spell gets instantly cast, but you can't use spell combat for x seconds afterwards.

 

Spell strike could also be used as a metamagic modifier for touch spells. When you cast a touch spell, you can at will apply spellstrike modifier at it. In that case that spell will get discharged through weapon (the advantage of doing that in pathfinder is increased threat range and a bit of extra damage from physical attack, disadvantage is worse chance to hit).

[J.E. Sawyer]

Really? A wizard in our Pathfinder campaign always complains about nerfing of haste and that it no longer provides an extra standard action. In the campaign I'm playing, the only really benefit of the haste spell is that extra attack. We have a spell dancer, monk, wizard teleporting at will, so that extra movement isn't that important. Heroism beats haste in terms of bonuses, although heroism is one person, while haste is party buff. While I can see how haste can still be very useful spell even without extra attack, I think it also depends on the party composition.

 

If the entire party has blown out movement bonuses (most don't), it's less useful, but still useful.  There are three aspects of haste that make it a Big Deal even without the extra attack: 1) the non-movement bonuses are unnamed/dodge, i.e. they stack with everything 2) it can be cast at range (unlike heroism) 3) it can affect the entire party. Standing back and giving the entire party a free-stacking attack bonus, AC bonus, reflex save bonus, plus an enhancement speed bonus is pretty good.

 

E: A bonus standard is nuts considering most spells take a standard action.

[Lephys]

^^ Also, much like metamagic feats/applications, you could have the physical-combat-enhancing aspect of spells normally "require the spell to take up a spell slot one/two levels higher than its actual spell level," or however the same idea would apply to the unknown specifics of the P:E spell system. Then, for people who wanted to specialize in spell-physical-combat hybridization like that, you could even have something akin to a magic school specialization, and offset the penalties for hybrid combat at the cost of now-existent penalties for regular spell usage.

 

I very much like the idea of having the option to use melee/ranged combat as a means of spell delivery, at the very least. How effective the actual physical attack is is still up in the air. I've made the comparison before, though, when someone talked about how melee Mages go against the inherently ranged concept of magic use: a gun can be anything from a sniper rifle to a sawed-off shotgun, and it's still a gun. You can even pistol-whip/rifle-butt people with guns. Obviously the literally-melee aspect of gun-combat is where that analogy no longer serves us, heh. But, there are touch spells and close-range spells in D&D's ruleset for a reason.

 

I don't think a caster's ability to stand up to a strong wind and merge spell and blade automatically means he's usurping some other class's role (like a Fighter's, for example). And, for the record, yes, DA:O's Arcane Warrior is a great example of how NOT to do it... "Your Strength and Intelligence just gained Wondertwin powers! We just literally broke our own stat system design so you could feel good about being uberly powerful! 8D!"

 

Also, Josh makes an excellent point. (He totally got that post in while I was being true to my avatar. )

Edited August 1, 2013 by Lephys

[Greensleeve]

 

Really? A wizard in our Pathfinder campaign always complains about nerfing of haste and that it no longer provides an extra standard action. In the campaign I'm playing, the only really benefit of the haste spell is that extra attack. We have a spell dancer, monk, wizard teleporting at will, so that extra movement isn't that important. Heroism beats haste in terms of bonuses, although heroism is one person, while haste is party buff. While I can see how haste can still be very useful spell even without extra attack, I think it also depends on the party composition.

 

If the entire party has blown out movement bonuses (most don't), it's less useful, but still useful.  There are three aspects of haste that make it a Big Deal even without the extra attack: 1) the non-movement bonuses are unnamed/dodge, i.e. they stack with everything 2) it can be cast at range (unlike heroism) 3) it can affect the entire party. Standing back and giving the entire party a free-stacking attack bonus, AC bonus, reflex save bonus, plus an enhancement speed bonus is pretty good.

 

E: A bonus standard is nuts considering most spells take a standard action.

 

 

You can say that again. Even just the additional attack is insane. My Wild Stalker Ranger does crazy amounts of damage, and with haste he easily carves almost anything our GM throws against us into shreds. 

[bonarbill]

 

 

So in other words, a D&D cleric?

 

 

 

Unlike a gish, cleric is focused a lot on buffing. Gish should be able to buff himself and cast good damage dealing spells as well as fight in melee. 

 

 Pretty sure my 3.5 cleric can do all of this the last time I played D&D.  Only melee buffs I used was either divine favor or Divine power.  The domain I picked were using offensive in nature anyway, so my clerics usually had offensive spells in addition to melee and decent buffs.

 

I think you guys are underestimating the power of the cleric, especially the 3rd edition one.

Edited August 1, 2013 by bonarbill

[anubite]

Melee-Mages are pretty fun in Path of Exile, notably because you can use Blood Magic to make it so your spells cost life instead of mana. A simple passive skill like that can be all it takes to make a melee-mage viable - you no longer have to pump points in a stat which raises your mana and can instead focus on health and spell damage. Such an idea is also possible to balance because it makes your spells cost health, which means you're hurting yourself while a mana-using mage would not be. The imbalance in POE with BM though, is that it's a bit too easy to stack %-based life regen (negating the downside of BM).

 

I think melee mages need to reinforce the idea of using weapons though, not simply using touch-based spells or conjuring weapons. PROC-based passive/active skills are a good way to do this, ie, a passive skill like:

 

Your critical strikes with <weapon type> always reduce the cast time of your next spell by 33%. Stacks up to three times. Lasts 7 seconds.

 

Such a skill is easy to balance, because it asks players to get balance their character for accuracy, attack speed, critical strike chance, and spell damage.

 

The MAIN issue with a gish though, at least in a cRPG that doesn't offer randomly generated loot, is providing equipment which functions well with them. Even if you have random loot, it can be a challenge as well. Gishes aren't very fun to play if all the melee weapons and plate you find don't favor your build (ie, don't provide any spell bonuses). It's also very boring at times when items feel too diluted. Hybrid classes are always harder to balance than purer ones, since they need a mix of several stats to function, so I think it's important for hybrid-class items (or skills?) to provide additional stats that pure classes don't get. But, in order to prevent hybrid classes from becoming too good, hybrid items should also have steeper or more frequent penalties to them (they're cursed, or simply require higher attributes to utilize or have certian restrictions).

Edited August 1, 2013 by anubite

[J.E. Sawyer]

 Pretty sure my 3.5 cleric can do all of this the last time I played D&D.  Only melee buffs I used was either divine favor or Divine power.  The domain I picked were using offensive in nature anyway, so my clerics usually had offensive spells in addition to melee and decent buffs.

 

I think you guys are underestimating the power of the cleric, especially the 3rd edition one.

 

3.5 clerics and druids can be extremely powerful in a variety of roles.

[jamoecw]

I don't think a caster's ability to stand up to a strong wind and merge spell and blade automatically means he's usurping some other class's role (like a Fighter's, for example). And, for the record, yes, DA:O's Arcane Warrior is a great example of how NOT to do it... "Your Strength and Intelligence just gained Wondertwin powers! We just literally broke our own stat system design so you could feel good about being uberly powerful! 8D!"

 

Also, Josh makes an excellent point. (He totally got that post in while I was being true to my avatar. )

battlemage was just the obvious OP build for a mage, ultimately DA:O had the same problem most other games have in that magic is the end all option.  if you choose to not go the mages route some fights are much harder, but if you do go mage heavy fights are cake.  clear an entire map with a few castings of a combo spell, or inta-killing low level opponents:

http://dragon-age.alteredgamer.com/dragon-age-origins/80841-doa-tactics-magic/

the team that did DA:O spent a lot of time relative to other classes to make mages more interesting with special spell combos and such, and their special abilities outshone the skills and abilities of other classes, their spells for the most part worked to some degree against bosses and such while other classes were less consistent.  mages were more reliable damage dealers, they had the best defenses the strongest offense, and the most AoE, there was nothing another party member could do better, except maybe spot traps, and traps weren't as big of a threat as enemies, nor as common.  as avoiding traps isn't ever necessary, and killing enemies is, then that which kills enemies the best is the most useful class.  if a class sacrifices killing potential for trap avoidance, then it has to be weighted heavily in favor of killing in order to make the class not useless.  as you are allowed to choose the class, then you must assume the best class at killing as the base line for killing, and work from there.

 

in other words a mages killing power in every situation outstripped a rogue's by enough to render them useless, and warriors lacked any real utility beyond killing potential, which mages were much better at.

[mexrage]

I actually prefer Gish classes to have spells and abilities related to their status as Gish, instead of having fewer spells from the same pure caster classes... And yes....Clerics and Druids were way too powerful on 3.5...that´s why they are nicknamed CoDzilla, because they become better than the fighter at fighting, they have spells and can heal too....granted, 3rd edition isn´t very generous toward noncasters at all...