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A lot of what I want to see depends on what directions the other classes go in. For example, the PF summoner is totally awesome (if a hair on the aggressive side power-wise), but it's something I'm more or less eager for depending on to what extent other classes (ranger and druid) spend their power budget on their pet. (For anyone for whom the notion of a "power budget" is kind of nauseating, just pretend I said "how pet-centric the ranger and druid are.")

I have mixed feelings about the artificer; on one hand, I think it's an amazing concept and I'd love to see it supported on the class level; on the other hand, it's a class that I feel like has historically struggled for defintion. I think that 3.5 Artificers are cool and imposing and 4e artificers are a blast to play with and as, but I don't think either really nails the feel all that well. (And both are among the more complex classes in their respective editions, so it's not like they didn't spend the complexity.)

I am full of love for the Warden, but I also recognize that it's not really as much of a resonant fantasy concept as many other classes and thus would be neither surprised nor heartbroken to see the concept pushed back.

I assume that some kind of even-less-vancian-than-the-cleric divine caster is likely to be a thing, and I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped the "invoker" or "favored soul" names there. (I like "invoker" a little better; I have a slight preference for one-word class names.)

Love the visuals on the Psychic Warrior and/or Battlemind, but that's an even more nonstandard concept than the warden, so I'm willing to wait on that.

Finally, I'd really like support for the character that has a single or a very small range of magical powers but is otherwise largely martial. I don't mean like "fighter has a move that pushes people and that move has a name therefore the fighter is magical hurr hurr hurr". I mean more like the trope - much more common to superheroes than to fantasy - of the character who can teleport, or shoot electricity, or jump really high, or see ten seconds into the future, or regenerate quickly from injuries, or breathe underwater, or turn their body to iron, or slow time, or climb walls like a lizard - but is otherwise more or less a standard martial character besides their one or two special abilities. I don't think this would necessarily be a class, and it's kind of different from what D&D normally does, but I think it's really cool and the difficulty in pulling it off well in most cases is something I wish were better.

The only thing I feel missing from player handooks 1 classers is a good arcane fighter. Put it and everything is done.

I do not belive psionics should go into the core, there are many people ho don't like them, and I do not want to see any sort of magical tecnology classes in the core. I do not like and they do not belong to my games, as wella s many others. They are good on eberron, bad on almost everything else.

I'd like to see a Swordmage merged with the Duskblade. That is to say more emphasis on the touch spells and channeling spells than on area blast powers. But definitely keep the teleporting and shielding powers the Swordmage had, and preferably a more varied spell list (at the very least include a lot of the self buff spells, particularly for defense).

Jul 20, 2012 -- 7:57AM, Haldrik wrote:

Jul 20, 2012 -- 7:14AM, Seerow wrote:

I'd like to see a Swordmage merged with the Duskblade. That is to say more emphasis on the touch spells and channeling spells than on area blast powers. But definitely keep the teleporting and shielding powers the Swordmage had, and preferably a more varied spell list (at the very least include a lot of the self buff spells, particularly for defense).

At first I was about to agree, but really there are two kinds of gish.

For me the perfect gish is the Jedi. Melee attacks and distant attacks. This is more like a War Cleric. (I see the Sun Cleric as a divine distant-combat Wizard.)

Another kind of gish is an arcane melee combatant. This one is more like an arcane Paladin. I think of it as an “Eldritch Knight” using Int and Cha for melee attacks. But Duskblade could make sense in this context.

See, to me the first one to me is a caster who happens to use a weapon when the situation warrants it. 

When I think of a Gish class, I expect the magic to be an integral part of how they fight. That magic infuses them subtely, making them stronger offensively (buffs to attributes, hit bonuses, etc) and defensively(Buffs to AC, resistances, miss chances, etc).  It also is used more obviously for things like mobility(teleporting, flying), special attacks (channeling touch spells), and party support (Shielding Aegis).

As it stands, the Duskblade fills about half of these, and the Swordmage fills about half of these. There's a couple of holes in there, and a couple of extraneous things in there, but overall merging the two gets pretty close to an ideal Gish to me.