What is a 'Melee Mage'?

I usually think of the hybrid version, either the Knight-Enchanter/Arcane Warrior type (which I'm not too fond of, personally), or the DA2 mage type (a mage who whacks the shit out of people with their staff when they get close range).

Mostly I think of a spellcaster who can throw themselves in the thick of battle and not be completely squished.

Speaking specifically of the DAI KE, both Spirit Blade and the self barrier generation (Fade Shield) would essentially just be the 'magical swordsman' since you're swinging a melee weapon (made of spirit energy) and absorbing damage.

...and yes, as anyone who followed me during MP knows, I too was not fond of the feel of our implementation of this style

Melee Mage - A mage that flunked out of magery school but is too embarrassed to admit this, so they still dress like a full fledged mage any time they're out in public. Pointed hat, ornate robe, fuzzy bathroom slippers - the works. However they don't know any spells so faced with bandits after their coin and body, they will have no choice but to whack the enemy with their cheap, plastic, fake staff.

I didn't vote in the poll because I'm not sure what this view would fall under.

When I hear the term, if we're to use it as an actual class or sub-class, I would think of a mage that uses magic to enhance melee fighting abilities. Perhaps they might use a force spell to enhance their swing, or use entropy spells (bring back entropy!) to weaken their enemy against physical attacks, and other such things.

Here is a scenario. Imagine a young person who has been training to fight the traditional way, and enjoys it, and is a bit of a late bloomer in becoming at mage at 12 or 13. Do you think this person is going to suddenly say, "Ew swords?" I don't. So I think they would incorporate their magical training and physical training and have a fighting style that makes use of both.

I can think of different backgrounds where this might happen. You can have a young person, living on the streets, getting into scraps in tight spaces where the normal desired distance of magical attacks just isn't feasible, and they also don't want to draw undue attention to themselves. Even without the street element, any apostate who has been hiding from the templars might adopt this sort of style. Perhaps their traditional spellcasting (fireballs, etc) can also be said to be weak because they just haven't had the correct training.


Unfortunately, while the KE's magical sword is cool, it is too reminiscent of a lightsaber and is unappealing to me because it feels like it was the combat designers' wink to Star Wars fans. That's not bad by itself, but having that thought is a bit immersion-breaking. =/

Given that we're not just talking about range, I suppose for me 'melee mage' would be any mage that uses what looks to be a conventional, close-range weapon and channels their magical powers through it or weaves in magic into their fighting style.

(...Of course, I shall never cease lobbying for magic archer )

I think it'd basically be a mage with spells used for close combat. So say using force magic to make their swings faster or hit harder. Or spells that help them move around the battlefield, like fade step or charge in mea. And offensive close range spells like supernova or shocking touch in divinity os2.

Plus give us access to all the wepons!! I like swords but a duel dagger rouge like mage would be so cool.

YESSS. I loved those. Bring the chakrams!

Just wanted to +1 this. Fade Step has been so essential to my KE builds (well, mage builds in general tbh) I sometimes forget about it.

Ciri took "fade-stepping" and "charging" around the battlefield to the next level in W3, and was definitely a lot of fun.

In my mind, it’s a mage whose attacks and defences are geared towards fighting in hand-to-hand combat. They may fight with a weapon like a sword, but they could even go into battle barehanded and use magic to enhance their attacks. They might have area of effect spells, but ones that emanate from the caster rather than being hurled from a distance.

I wouldn’t want a melee caster to be a one-trick pony like the Knight Enchanter spamming Spirit Blade.

Thor 😆😆

Since I love mentioning the idea of spellsword or melee mage, I guess I should give my 5 cents

If we talk fantasy of it, for me it's a mage who focuses on short ranged, chaotic, instant spells (picture short ranged cones spells or AoEs centered on the mage) with possibly weaker, single target ranged blasts, and who complements that style with limited range of quick melee abilities. They can have some magic based defenses but these aren't entirely necessary.

As for gameplay, spells and melee would ideally flow into each other, spells empowering or enabling melee attacks and/or vice versa. Some comparisons could be drawn with sign/combat Geralt with Replenishment rune from the Witcher 3, Frost Death Knight from World of Warcraft or Red Mage from Final Fantasy 14. Each have some aspect of what the ideal spellsword would be, but none of them is perfect, Witcher and Frost DK are too melee heavy while Red Mage is too spell heavy for my tastes.

Edit: Another example for this is actually from Mass Effect Andromeda. Tactical Cloak, Warp, Shockwave, with passives like Biotic Warrior. It has nice synergy between its abilities and with melee attacks with multiple possible approaches to combat.
You can throw out Warp which primes enemy and increases damage of your next melee, then you cloak to further increase it, close in and melee, Shockwave to detonate Warp and then swing again.

Combat loops like that are great imho

Oh and it should preferably utilise single one handed weapon rather than other weapon combinations currently usable in DA.

In old D&D a Melee Mage would have been a multi-class Warrior/Mage, able to use melee weapons but constrained as to the sort of armour they could wear as it normally interfered with spell casting. However, some magical armour (often elven) would allow this.

In the Thedas universe the melee mage is the Arcane Warrior of DAO. There the spec allowed you to use your magic score instead of your strength score to determine whether you could use certain weapons and armour that would normally be denied to the regular mage. So in DAO my mage ended up wearing the blood dragon armour and wielding a sword. What they did do to limit your effectiveness was to make you sheath your sword before you could cast spells, which I thought was fair enough and made sense as a sword could not be used to channel spells like a staff could.

Then in DAI they turned Arcane Warrior into Knight Enchanter (except in multi-player) but with both these specs you simply become the Jedi Warrior of Thedas, with a light sabre instead of an actual sword and no possibility to use non-mage armour. Whilst the light sabre looked cool and various other attributes of the Knight Enchanter made you all but unstoppable, allowing you to be at the forefront of battle, it did not qualify for me as a Melee Mage but simply an overpowered normal mage. Don't get me wrong, I found it a blast to play but when a mage can fight off a high dragon all by themselves, then that is definitely overpowered.