Professional Documents
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Handbook
by James Raviolos
Table of Contents
Overview
Feats
Class Skills
Equipment
Spellcasting
Tactics
While duskblades can be described as arcane gish, they don't need clever
dips in prestige classes to acquire as high base attack bonus and
spellcasting as possible. In fact they do fine even without prestige classes
and they get their most powerful ability at medium to high levels.
Basic Stats:
Full Base Attack Bonus
d8 Hit Die
Good Fortitude and Will saves
2+int skill points
Essential Abilities:
Duskblades are arcane gish-in-a-can. As such they benefit from high:
There is virtually no reason for you to boost dexterity. Your AC can be kept
high with a good suit of armor and your attack bonus is just fine with
strength. Charisma is a dump stat.
Class Abilities:
Spells: Duskblades gain a small selection of arcane spells. They
cast like a sorcerer does and their key ability for spellcasting is
intelligence.
What to Look for:
So you are playing a duskblade. That means you have 7 available general
feats to work with, not counting flaws or racial bonus feats. Combat
casting is a bonus for you, even though it's not that important, unless you
want to fulfill a requirement. That means you are looking for stand-alone
feats or small feat-chains. With that in mind, try to avoid useless feats
that are just used to get something better (an unrelated example is dodge
and mobility for spring attack, while the resulting feat is nice, its
requirements are below average) or feats that are used to switch your
main fighting ability to dexterity, like two weapon fighting and its
improved versions or weapon finesse. They are very good, but just not for
this class. Good feat examples are power attack, knowledge devotion,
arcane strike and obtain familiar.
General Feats
Arcane Disciple: A way to expand your spell list a little and enrich
it with some touch spells to use with your arcane channeling.
Draconic Aura: Useful in many situations. If you choose the energy
aura you get a bonus on your spells difficulty class. If you are of the
dragonblood type the bonus is dependant on your level. It is a way
to have normal DCs.
Extra Spell: According to how your DM interprets this, it may let
you choose a spell not from your spell list. Even if that isn't the case
it still benefits you a lot, due to your small number of spells known.
Obtain Familiar: Familiars get to deliver touch spells, which
duskblades have a thing for and provide you with some bonuses.
Besides that, familiars improve your skills through aid another, they
can act as scouts and even advance your roleplaying possibilities if
they talk. A feat for a companion is a great trade in my book.
Improved Familiar: Improves your normal familiar to something
greater. Imps and coure eladrins are probably the best candidates.
Your high BAB and hit points though make familiars of medium size
(like small elementals, mephits or other improved familiars) and
high strength a formidable fighting companion.
Practised Spellcaster: Mainly for multiclass duskblades. Hopefully
you will follow my advice on single classed duskblades and you
won't need this.
Versatile Spellcaster: Since you already have a huge amount of
spells per day, the cost is not big. In case you use cantrips to fuel
1st spells or 1st spells to fuel 2nd, you get 1-1 spell level ratio.
Works especially great with rings of wizardry.
Knowledge Devotion: You have all knowledges as class skills and
this feat actually connects your skills with your fighting capabilities.
It's interesting and very useful. For example compare it with weapon
focus or weapon specialization: just by expending a few skill points
(5-6 really) you get +1 to hit with all weapons AND damage. You
can then use your power attack and transform it to +3 damage with
your two-handed weapon, essentially getting something better than
both feats. And that is only if considering the least bonus you can
get from the feat. It is a very good choice as a 3rd level feat.
Combat Feats
Class Skills:
Duskblades receive a small amount of skill points per level, but one of
their best attributes is intelligence, so you are going to receive a decent
amount. Your best bet is probably concentration and knowledges.
You should also consider using the cityscape web enhancement (the file is
attached to this post). It will let you swap the worthless ride with tumble.
Although you cannot tumble in armor that hinders your speed, there are
two ways to overcome this problem. The first is using light armor or
medium mithral armor. The second is to take a race that heavy armor
doesn't reduce its speed. An example is dwarf (or dream dwarf from races
of stone which probably works better).
Enchantments:
MIC
Bloodstone : As spellstoring but only for vampiric touch spells.
It also empowers it for free. Vampiric touch is going to be your
bread and butter channeling spell at later levels and free empower
really scales its damage.
MIC
Shattermantle : Great for gishes. Reducing the spell resistance
of your targets can help your spellcasting allies, too.
MIC
Sizing : A nice weapon enchantment if you use reach weapons
and/or change your size. According to the FAQ a reach weapon of a
size smaller than your actual size doesn't give you reach benefits.
So if you need to attack an adjacent enemy just lower the size of
your weapon to lose reach benefits. Remember that you do get a
penalty (-2) on attack rolls for wielding a weapon not of your
appropriate size. It's the best (and featless!) way to strike enemies
close to you when wielding a reach weapon that doesn't let you
strike adjacent targets.
DMG
Speed : More attacks means more targets affected with your
channeling. Only useable after 13th level since you get the extra
attack on a full attack action. Also doesn't stack with the speed
armor enchantment or haste spell. It's pretty expensive though.
MIC
Whirling : Effectivelly gives you the whirlwind attack feat
useable 3/day. Very nice for only +1 bonus. You should eventually
get it on your weapon (or one of your weapons if you use multiple).
Whirling attack is a full-attack action so it is usable with arcane
channeling on a full attack. It is a cheap way to gain an ability that
has a huge amount of required feats.
Armor:
You gain the ability to ignore arcane spellcasting failure from medium
armor at 4th level. Mithral quality lets you treat an armor as one category
lighter. So you can use mithral heavy armor without casting failure. Since
Duskblades are proficient with physical skills like jump, climb, swim and
ride i would suggest a mithral breastplate. That way you can maintain
Spells:
Duskblades have a limited list, so it's easy to comment on every spell they
get. Remember not to get many spells that require saving throws to affect
their targets and to avoid spells that you are not going to use much.
Those are better on a wand or eternal wand.
Touch of fatigue, chill touch, shocking grasp, resist energy, dimension hop,
ghoul touch, touch of idiocy, dispelling touch and vampiric touch are all
range:touch spells.
Shocking grasp, chill touch, vampiric touch are the main damaging spells
of the duskblade.
Touch of fatigue, ghoul touch, touch of idiocy, dispelling touch are mainly
used to debuff.
Dimension Hop is interesting when you want the enemies away from you,
or throw them down a cliff.
Greater magic weapon and resist energy are buffs.
Now, while the offensive uses are pretty straightforward, there can be
defensive/buffing uses as well.
e.g. you can channel resist energy and buff your party or greater magic
weapon. That way you affect multiple targets per casting instead of just
one. Use a weapon that deals nonlethal damage such as a whip or your
unarmed strike.
It may not be much, but it becomes really interesting with spells with
expensive material components. An example of this is Raise Dead. With
just a whip you pay the material component of one spell (5.000) and raise
4 subjects which would normaly cost 4x the price (20.000).
Here is a small analysis and tips for each spell, listed by level:
0-Level
Not much to say here. You get acid splash, disrupt undead, ray of frost
and touch of fatigue. Eventually you'll get most of them, but be sure to
grab touch of fatigue, the only spell that you can channel from this level.
Unfortunately, when you get your channeling ability at 3rd level, 0-level
spells lack significantly in power, but you can see it as an extra effect on
your attack.
1st Level
Now there are two categories. The first one is the spells you'll need early
before you get your channeling ability, but you'll want to quickly get rid of
them later. The second category consists of spells that work great when
you channel them.
always female
suspects
Posts: 1140
Let me save everyone a bunch of time: your first four feats (or 4 of your
first 5 if you're human) will be power attack, knowledge devotion, obtain
familiar, and arcane strike. Don't argue it, don't question it, just accept it.
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