Tag Archives: warmage

October 9, 2016

Character Study: Yun/Psyche/Mageris

By Rebecca M. Horner

…This character went by a lot of names, okay? This was the warmage character…that eventually got turned into a favored soul/warmage gestalt and had a lot going on, both in front of and behind the scenes.

Short story on why her classes changed: we had one campaign going with her as the warmage, and the DM realized the story was going in a direction he felt was in his comfort zone and he wanted to stretch himself. We all agreed to a restart, most of the players changed their characters entirely…but I am the sort of person who wants some conclusion for characters, so I just modified her (only I didn’t, we’ll get there). The campaign, through no one in the current group’s fault, ended up dragging and then getting wrapped up quickly, but the conclusion was definitely there and so I am quite content with this character.

First off, I got to play with the amnesia trope, which is one of my favorites. This character was raised as Graceella (childhood name, elves are weird) and took on Mageris as her adult name. She was a lower born noble, but was lifebonded with the heir to the empire. But considering how being lifebonded can make life complicated, the adults in the situation decided to separate them in hopes of weakening it a little. Unfortunately, one adult (who Mageris thought was her mother, actually her aunt and this was a lot of fun later) took it too far and wiped all of her memories. All that there was for this poor girl to figure out who she was was her scrawl of her signature at an inn, which she thought said “Yun.”

Now, while I was pretty careful about fleshing out the mother’s side of the family…I hadn’t paid attention to the father’s side. So the DM got to have some leeway with them, and boy did he take it. It also led to us having to keep two different histories straight. Yep, we had parallel world hopping going on, and while most of the party was from the same world, I was from the original RP’s world, which was two different situations. At several points, we ended up killing that world’s version of Psyche, as several different possible outcomes to her situation played out. This is also how I ended up with the sword I used, which was pretty epic and I loved. The DM really worked hard to make sure everyone in the party stayed balanced, which is great when you contrast people who understand how the classes are in strength compared to others…and then people like me, who just create a character and find the appropriate class and run with it, regardless of how strong of a class it is.

And what’s really fun is the change that happened to this character without her memories. She had been raised the gentle, retiring lady who happened to have warmage capabilities, someone who was frequently overwhelmed by the lifebond who was used to getting his way as they got older. But without those memories, away from friends and family, she had to learn to stand on her and found her own voice and authority. When her memories returned, she had to try and mesh those two different personalities together. Thus, when she started going by Psyche. This was also when she started having real trust issues with the adults in her life, because she was very upset over how they had treated her, and God can elves hold grudges. And it was fun when she met her paternal uncles, and she was full of stubborn authority instead of being demure. (One really didn’t like it, it was funny.)

The favored soul aspect was fun too, because Psyche was Neutral Good, the Good is Not Nice trope at times, definitely not the gentle maiden anymore. But she was chosen by a draconic deity who was true Neutral, and his focus was on maintaining balance and stability…even if that stability couldn’t be considered “good” by an objective eye. There were a couple of instances where Psyche had to convince her deity to do something that was going to destabilize the world they were in at that time, where the “good” argument wasn’t going to work. Usually she managed to pull it off by arguing that they were about to throw the balance off anyway…it didn’t always work.

Something fun I did with her (just because I could) was do an elemental thing with her spell choices. While warmage’s known spells are set, with lots of fire and lightning, I got to pick her favored soul list. I ended up going with ice and holy light offensive spells aside from the request healer spells, creating what I consider this interesting contrast in the two sides to her nature, and what ended up being the two conflicting personalities in her head: headstrong and authoritative Yun and the more retiring and quiet Mageris. Funnily enough, it was the favored soul stuff (which matches Mageris better) that flared up with the loss of memory.

As for the lifebond, there was a lot of shenanigans, but things ended up working out there well…sorta. We didn’t get to RP much with him, or rather the real him (which is probably for the better for everyone’s comfort level), but I imagine the epilogue was pretty entertaining. Both end up being chosen favored souls of draconic deities, but he doesn’t get as much of a chance to interact with her after she has her memories back and both of them are aware of it until it has ended and they are now being the clean-up crew. I have mental stories and musings about how he would handle the change in personality in his lifebond, and the different path their lives have taken. Though really, he is probably happy about the difference–he has magic now, when previously he didn’t, so yay equalizer.

I honestly think I might return to Psyche at some point, though not as a DnD character. Rather, I’d like to play with her as an original fiction character. I think it could be a lot of fun, and let me explore some things with her that I couldn’t in a DnD setting, since there’s either no mechanic for it, no point to it without possibly taking up time that isn’t fair to the other players, or just be something I’m more comfortable writing rather than RPing in a tabletop setting.

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February 22, 2015

Tabletop RP: Warmages can be fun too!

By Rebecca M. Horner

I swear, I’ll have a review next week. The first random book from Ginny’s box turned out to need a movie first to understand it (I’m not thrilled about this stupidity of the writer), so instead, here, have some DnD rambles. This one is going to be pretty technical, but hopefully I’ll be able to explain it all.

The current (or one of the current) campaigns I’m in, I’m playing a gestalt (meaning two classes at the same time with no penalties) warmage/favored soul. The character is actually a reboot of a straight warmage I was playing. We managed to get her really good armor early on in the campaign, and I decided to drop the mounted aspect to her when the story went a different direction than last time, so I got on the Internet to see some options for better equipment for warmages.

Only to discover that most people don’t play straight warmages. Everyone will dabble in them to get their mages the ability to wear armor, but otherwise, everyone seems to pass them off as a useless class, or at least not one of the better ones.

Now that just ain’t fair.

Maybe I don’t play the game right, but I like my characters to not have some gaping hole in their abilities/skill set. Now some things, like stealthy things and swimming and climbing, yes, armor is going to get in the way of that, so if I can keep that a solid +0 with characters in heavier armor, I’m happy. But I don’t want to be constantly missing Spot and Listen checks if they have fairly easy checks to meet. I hate having a poor save that is easily manipulated by the DM. (Will, why is it always WILL?) So those people who min-max, who are capable of great, amazing things but are worse than useless for anything else…confuse the dickens out of me.

Now, I understand at least a little where they are coming from. Warmages don’t have much in the way of skills, they don’t have very many skill points per level, and their spell list is very concentrated. They get some things each level that make their spells more damaging, but overall, at least on the surface, there just isn’t much special about them.

LIES, I say, LIES. (In the most joking tone imaginable.)

You are looking at a specialized tool with a warmage. It is meant to be magical artillery. In my case, I was going to be mounted magical artillery with a warhorse who was effectively a health battery to take some of the damage and protect my hit points. But even without that extra health defense, I have not really had issues on that front (unless I’ve been completely screwed, Confusion is an AWFUL spell, I swear, and I was against an enemy above my paygrade ALONE). The warmage is meant to stay just out of reach of the enemy except from other spells and just bring down hellfire like rain. Trust me, I have been doing this. It has been amazing and painful to watch all at the same time. The class gives you a little wiggle room, letting you add new spells to the set list to help round the mage out of if they are the only spellcaster the party has and there is a specific spell you keep needing, but really, depending on party build, you can just add more variety to your spells. When it comes to taking a hit, they are fairly squishy because all spellcasters kinda are, but the addition of armor up to medium type really helps.

So why do I think my character has been doing well despite being this much-looked-down-upon class? Well, she’s decently balanced. As long as I don’t completely bungle a roll, she could survive on her own (and had to do so, at one point). Her spells vary enough that she can take on multiple attackers at the same time, as she has had to do before, and usually wipes out the idiots that walk straight into swords and lets her help out her allies or pick off others at a distance. I’ve got most of her scores reasonably around 15, give or take a couple points, except her Charisma score (her force of personality) which is at 18, good since it is the main source of her magic power. Her armor score is decent, and now I’m at the point where I can add miss chances for hitting her and such rather than bolstering her armor score.

Now that I’ve defended warmage as a straight class, what are some recs I can make? Well, my armor has Greater Healing properties, which I would definitely recommend. It’s also mithral banded mail, giving me nice bonuses while not making me take a feat for heavier armor. I’ve also got a lesser Iron Ward Diamond, which absorbs some of the damage of each hit. You could splurge and get the more expensive, I just took what I had the money for. A Healing Belt would be a quicker fix until you get your hands on the better armor, though, and a light shield can still be used even if you are casting spells (you just can’t have a weapon in hand too). Eventually, I want to get a shield with +3 Fortification, meaning there will be a 75% chance of critical hits and sneak attacks failing, so I’d only take normal damage from the hit.

I also suggest getting your dexterity as high as you can, fitting to wherever the armor you are planning on getting limits your bonus. For this, I actually bought Gloves of Dexterity, which gave me the extra points without making me waste the bonuses I get every four levels. Don’t worry about wisdom too much, the class actually helps you out with Will saves and you don’t need it for what the class is meant for. But Constitution will be your third big focus on top of Dexterity and Charisma. When it comes to Intelligence, well, the higher it is, the more extra damage your class features give you, but you could just take the feat Extra Edge, which will do about the same level of good if not more so in my opinion. Do any of my readers have any recs for making a warmage better? Or do you have a class that is often looked down on that you think is awesome? Feel free to share in the comments!

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