maybe its not about power gaming maybe its about flavor gaming? is that a concept you even understand? if he wanted to play a barbarian its not that hard any idiot can do that and make it work. playing a 'weaker' character can be more rewarding because it requires much more thought. rather than just running around the table going 'hulk smash.'

all of this is besides the point that the OP was talking about a battlecaster of some flavor NOT some autopiolet BSF variant. my point was that as a glass cannon the duskblade can still deal respectable damage if played intelligently. the damage doesn't puff out, as you stated, it grows with the correct selection of spells. now i realize that it requires much more thought than the idiot proof barbarian but some people like that.

The optimized damage of a duskblade is less than half that of an optimized fighter or barbarian - it is less than a quarter of a damage focused wizard or cleric, and damage focus is not optimal for either of those classes.

In less optimized groups, it still lags behind, but not by as much. However, it also loses out in durability and incidental abilities by comparison to even a fighter, much less a cleric or rogue.

My point that it peters out at higher levels stands.

That is why I suggested playing an unseen seer, or a swordsage, as opposed to playing a duskblade.

This is the second time i've said this, so i'm not going to bother saying it again if you misread me again.

@Whitetyger, The duskblade does lose some of it's ability to keep up, but without items or crossclassing, it can keep up with a mage easier than a fighter can. However, all the classes I've mentioned have been more in the variety of stealth based battlecasters. I know now that duskblades aren't very good for that, but some of their abilities can help out with the combat area.

@Rejakor, haven't looked too much at the classes you suggested lately, mostly because my groups weekly session keeps getting cancelled due to people being busy.

If your group is relatively unoptimized, an optimized fighter, or even semi-optimized, can outshine a mage really easily. DnD scales like that hugely depending on your character choices.

That said, if you want to play a stealthy melee fellow with spells, you are likely going to have to engage in some kind of optimization, as in DnD mechanics those two things don't really mesh well (I know because it is the thing I most often play, in all kinds of groups) and there are bugger all options for it (unseen seer and daggerspell mage are pretty much it, out of oh so many splats). That said, with a bit of careful trickery, you can end up with a versatile and powerful character that can keep up with unoptimized mages and tier 3 classes easily.

Playing a weaker character past a certain point also means you get to drag down the team and become a liability rather than an asset. I am told that this sort of behavior is problematic and inconsiderate of others.

I completely agree with that. Flavor is alright, but it's better suited for campaigns that rely more on diplomacy and such than combat.

It's also boring. DnD is a combat game, at least usually, so there's fighting in it. If your contribution to combat is to occasionally shoot a crossbow bolt that always misses, or always miss with your sword, or whatever, then it's boring as hell for the 2 or so hours it takes to do combat.

You could actually suck at combat and still be pretty good in combat situations. I had a friend who mastered the art of bluffing, and convinced a group of goblins that he was a fellow goblin and their leader was one of the adventurers in disguise trying to fool them. The result was basically him being the only adventurer that took no damage the entire fight while the goblins went into a free for all between themselves and the other adventurers. Granted, a master bluffer won't be able to do that in every combat situation, but it makes for fairly entertaining combat when he can.

Well, a hat of disguise and a good bluff check are very helpful, but you take penalties for having to hurry social checks in combat for a reason.

And lots of foes are ones you can't reason with, i.e., if they are angry bears.

Or a wyvern.

Or some skellingtons.

etc.

i almost used a build like this once, i was super excited about it. wiknda wish there was something similar in 4e.