Gish - Melee Reserve Feat

[YYA]

I'm curious how those would work, considering the overwhelming majority of melee builds tend to incorporate either NH or EW as appropriate. I guess maybe a swashbuckler/wizard, though you'll have to lose a good deal of spell progression or be nigh-useless against sneak-immune enemies... and good luck getting a sorcerous equivalent out the door.

In my eyes, Swashbuckler feels like a trap. It would be nice as a three level dip, but five levels is usually too much for what it offers.

So how about we first turn our gaze towards a strength based wizard/sorcerer Gish? If we are entirely honest, you only need access to 7th level spells to be able to cast Stilled Cloudkill and Stone Body. Don't forget to spend a feat to get Craft Wand as well. In other words, you just need something like 17 intelligence or charisma to be able to all og your offensive spells.

As for the build itself, Fighter 12/Wizard or Sorcerer 8/Eldritch Knight 10 or Fighter 12/Wizard or Sorcerer 8/Dragonslayer 10 will work just fine to get you your 7th level spell slots. You can have the minimum intelligence or charisma for your highest level of spells, with or without a +3 item, and everything else you have simply goes to buffing up your strength ability score. You have the BAB of 26, and your caster level is meaningless because if cast any spells, then those spells are just going to be for offensive purposes and you do not need to have them active 24/7. Thus you run around and gather a mob, you cast Cloudkill infront of you, and follow it up with Stone Body, or Iron Body, and then you just walk into your deadly cloud and just cleave through your opposition. You have the figher feats for AB and Damage, in addition to high Strength ability score, and when it comes to the standards defensive buffs of your arcane spell book, you have your Mirror Images, Hastes, Shields, Displacements, etc crafted into wands. If you get dispelled, you just reapply your defensive spells from your wand. Not to mention that thanks to Fighter levels, you can probably grab Improved Combat Expertise with ease to have even more AC with your Tower Shield and Full-plate. And if you got the dexterity to make most out of Mithral Chainmail, you can probably even make use of the Deadly Defense with your Tower Shield in your off hand. Oh, and with the standard +3 or +4 equipment, you are not dead if your enemy happens to dispel your wand buffs.

Naturally such a build will be better off with Northlander Hewing, but technically you do not need it.

[YYA]

As far as i'm concerned the existence of better alternatives is not a sufficient argument when arcane Gish builds are already playable, without EW or NH.

Well, I largely approach this from the perspective of rule of cool, you are an arcanist, and so you enchant your blade with a portion of arcane might. Thus when you swing that sword, or axe, or staff, or maybe a bow, or whatever your weapon of choice is, you enchant it with a portion of your arcane might. Your hands glow, your weapon glimmers as the arcane energies cleave through the air to strike at your foes.

It would also potentially help diffrentiate the arcane gishes from the divine gishes.

What kind of Gish builds would need such a feat to be playable ?

The badly build ones based on role-playing gimmicks.

[JustAnotherGuy]

The only input I can add is that, I ended up RCRing out of my STR based wizard gish. Because it was so boring. The only "extra damage" feat he had was IPA. And he could solo anything on the server except the White Dragon. So, based solely on that, I would have to say that extra damage is unnecessary. I will concede that I don't know the other builds. This was was 10 Wiz / 10 DS / 10 AK. And it held up perfectly fine.