Capstone: Mage Commando

So, Eldritch Knight is too boring for you, eh? Alright, I’ll take that implicit challenge.

I used Martial Training rather than BAB on the assumption this was a military-oriented archetype. Each tier of the capstone also requires a Mastery talent for at least one melee weapon of your choice.

Tier	Benefits	Prerequisites
Heroic	Runic Strike (3), Eldritch Defense	Heroic Martial Training, Heroic $melee Mastery, L4 spells
Master	Runic Strike (4), Mage Camouflage	Master Martial Training, Master $melee Mastery, L5 spells, Base Fort +12
Champion	Runic Strike (5), Arcane Artillery	Champion Martial Training, Champion $melee Mastery, L6 spells, Base Fort +15

Runic Strike

You can overlay magical energies on a melee weapon. You cast up to three desired spells as normal while holding the weapon in question, deciding in which order to overlay them. As part of any successful melee strike, you can activate the magical energy to cause a spell to take effect, with the victim of your strike as the target. You don’t have to activate the spell on a melee strike if you don’t want to. You can only have a runic overlay on one weapon at a time, and you can clear all overlaid spells from an item as a free action, even if the weapon is out of reach.

Normally the spells are activated in the order you listed them when preparing the weapon: e.g. if you overlaid lightning bolt, shatter, and hold person, your first strike would cause lightning bolt damage, the second would attempt to shatter an item, and so on. You can activate a spell further down the list, but any spells preceding it are discarded: for example, you could skip directly to the shatter effect, but your lightning bolt would be discarded in the process. Your next melee strike can then be used to cast hold person.

Eldritch Defense

You can overlay a spell onto a suit of armour or a shield. You can overlay onto more than one item at a time, but each can only hold one overlaid spell. When you are successfully struck by an opponent’s melee strike (regardless of whether he causes damage or not), as a reaction you can activate the spell with either him or you as the target.

Mage Camouflage

You consume one L5 spell slot to polymorph yourself into another form. You can also misdirect aura-detecting divination spells while polymorphed, and you can change the target of the misdirection at any time. If any of your equipment melds into the new form, any runic overlays you have placed on that equipment are transferred to your natural weapons (for weapon overlays) or body (for defensive overlays).

The effect lasts until your next rest.

Arcane Artillery

You consume one L6 spell slot to create a one-foot-diameter sphere of magical force that can move around freely at your direction. You can cast spells as if you were positioned at the sphere’s location, or at your actual location, as desired. If you close your eyes then you can see through the sphere (no audio) as if you were standing there; looking through the sphere does not trigger gaze attacks but provides no protection against illusions.

The sphere floats in its current position normally, but you can move it up to 30ft by spending an action concentrating. The sphere can be controlled at up to long range. The sphere can encapsulate creatures or objects (as a resilient sphere) provided they are small enough. If the contents weigh more than 500lb the sphere will fall at 60ft per round when you don’t concentrate on keeping it aloft.

The sphere lasts until your next rest, or until destroyed by similar means to a resilient sphere.