I'd like to take a moment about 2 of my favourite classes - Shadowcaster and Spellblade

[Agony_Aunt]

I've always had a soft spot for hybrid melee/casters. Ranger has been a favourite of mine since first edition D&D.

I'd like to take a moment to talk about the Shadowcaster and Spellblade classes.

These classes often get mid level ratings in tier lists, and yet, i find them fun to play and quite powerful, even if they don't perhaps get the same damage output of their fellow subclasses.

The Palace of Ice DLC enables both of them to get third level spells, which is pretty useful for both.

One thing i love to have in my teams is mobility, the ability to move around and control the battlefield, and both have this in spades.

My main run through PoI at the moment is a team of 4 rogues (4 different subclasses) and the ability of the whole team to sneak well and launch a ton of sneak damage on the first turn, then rush to the next enemy and land hits is huge. With the Cloak of Elvenkind i can literally walk up to the face of some enemies without being spotted, and others i can navigate around and get behind. Its been my most fun team to play to date and very tactical, ensuring you always have at least 2 party members on each enemy, which is quite possible with 2 dashes per turn if needed. All have Forest Walker as well, for an extra 2 movement points and they are all Silvan Elves, the fastest movers in the game.

As you can imagine, they can move very far on their turns.

So, with that in mind, let's first look at the Shadowcaster. On top of the sneak damage, which just keeps going up and up with levels (dual wielding of course to increase chance of getting that sneak damage off), mobility, and sneakiness, it has some quite useful features.

Shadow retribution - when targetted by a spell you can fire off a cantrip in return. That really means Shadow Dagger, and while its only 1d8 damage, with a WIS save, sometimes that little bit of damage can be the bit you need to take down enemies, especially early levels.

Shadow Dodge is a short range teleport. Generally speaking, i don't use it much, since you can move around effectively without it. But it can be useful to teleport to otherwise impossible to reach places or to position yourself next to an enemy with the path is blocked for some reason.

Shadow Casting - sneak damage applies to spells with an attack roll. It comes in late, and of limited use, since you're likely carrying a bow anyway. But means you don't have to swap weapons, useful when enemies can move into melee range of you and you want to maintain the ability to use the Twin Blade feat.

Spells:

This is where the increased level from PoI helps as you now get access to counterspell. While there are other decent spells they get (Mage Armour, Identify, Shield, etc), counterspell is probably the one that can save your bacon the most. Sure, maybe you've got a wizard in the party with it as well, but the more counterspells you have access to in a battle, especially when facing multiple casters, the better. With a couple of casters with counterspell you can effectively shut down enemy casters.

On to the Spellblade

There are different ways of building these, but i prefer full plate and two handed fighting style. As noted earlier, they can't quite match the damage output of the Champion but... they can (more on that later).

Most of their specific abilities i don't care about much, but again, the spells come into play, and one ability Arcane Escape, which allows you to move an additional 3 cells after taking a turn. This enables you to start battle by casting a spell, then moving further to engage, and then using your bonus attack or action surge to get damage in quickly. Remember, i love mobility.

Spells:

PoI really unleashes them. But let's first start with a some lower level spells.

Expeditious Retreat and Longstrider (and also Jump to a lesser extent) increase your ability to get around the battlefield to where you are needed. Longstrider you can cast well in advance of potential combat, just keep it cast just in case. Alternately, if you see enemies ahead, or combat is already started, Expeditious Retreat can give you dash as a bonus action, just like a rogue, to get around the field.

At level 2 spells we get Misty Step, again, useful for getting around, spider climb, and hold person (useful to stop those pesky archers or casters running away).

But level 3 spells is where it really comes online.

Haste - one of the best spells for melee focused characters. Cast Haste, get 3 bonus movement from Arcane Escape, and you're golden for getting to the enemy. On top, you can turn that standard 3 attacks per turn into 4 (or 5 with follow up strike), which then can be doubled into 8/10 attacks per turn with action surge.

Flying enemies? Why mess around with a bow when you can cast Fly and whack them in the face with your big stick?

On top, since you're a fighter, you're going to have high CON, so concentration spells shouldn't be an issue, and throw in flawless concentration and it will be rare you lose concentration on your haste/fly/etc.

Now, i know what some people will say. Why not just have your wizard (or whoever) cast those spells on the fighter?

Well, because if the wizard is buffing the fighter, they aren't buffing someone else, they aren't casting offensive spells or control spells, or something else they could be doing. The Spellblade largely frees up your buffers from the need to buff them.

Anyway, just thought i'd share my feelings on these classes. Hope you found it informative.

[channeljohn]

Thanks for writing all this! When I was first playing CotM, I went looking around online for advice on best classes to build the best team, etc. as I only have a limited amount of time to play games (usually) and don't want to get dozens of hours into something only to find it unwinnable because of a choice I made at the beginning. What I found everywhere online was a ton of min/max-ers talking about how this class sucks, that class sucks, "if you don't take a cleric, don't bother playing," etc, etc. I finally just picked classes that made good head-canon for me and would be fun to play and figured that, if the game gives you a bunch of race and class choices but is only winnable with a certain combination, that's just bad design.

Happily, the design was good and none of that min-maxing advice turned out to be very important. Of my four heroes--a warlock, a monk, a barbarian, and a wizard-- only one was even in the top half of most tier lists. And their sub-classes (or paths or whatever) were all considered "the worst" of each (except the wizard's)... and we still not only beat CotM but absolutely dominated a good chunk of PoI. Yeah, sure, I was playing on the default difficulty rather than Cataclysm, so I'm sure certain players will roll their eyes and feel superior but you know what? I had a great time, enjoyed playing my chosen heroes up to current max level, and got to play with the abilities, powers, and personas I found fun and interesting instead of just trying to squeeze an extra point or two out of everything.

The game is really well balanced, imo. Even with characters not considered S-Tier (or even A-Tier, mostly), I found the battles all the way through the game fun, sometimes tough, and the BBG fights at the end of PoI were perfectly ramped for the heroes I brought. We won but I REALLY had to manage my resources and, especially in the last battle, there were a few times it could've gone either way (though we did win first time through, so, y'know, they don't call us the 'Heroes of the Rift' for nothing!).

If it's fun for people to min-max, that's great; people should play games the way they like. But for everyone else, it's good to know that it really isn't necessary and, ultimately, it all kind of balances out.

I found your post here really inspiring, btw. For my next adventure, I may try a more "out of the box" team build than my relatively basic spread of two fighters, a ranged magic-user, and a mix (my Pact of the Blade warlock). That being said, I'm def going to miss all the extra attacks I was getting with my hasted-and-frenzied Barbarian and Monk doing crazy monk stuff.

[Agony_Aunt]

Glad you found it useful.

I also play on default (with karmic dice on though, which i'm sure the hardcore will roll their eyes at), and what I like about it is you don't have to min-max. Go with whatever you want and its doable, although some groups are harder than others. 4 Clerics is challenging in the damage department unless you're spamming long rests, although very defensive of course.

I just find themed teams to be more interesting to play than worrying about party balance.