Let's talk gish

>Fate is a poor example to use here, since its method of handling combat actions is so nebulous that a generic "magic" skill is not much different from any other skill.
For purposes of this conversation, generic systems that provide access to martial and magical skills with equal ease are fair to bring up. Being loosely defined in its effects is a fair criticism, however.

Any examples of a generic system featuring hybrids that isn't wishy-washy on the details?

GURPS is worth looking at.

How would you make a good gish in GURPS?

I haven't really looked at it extensively, but I don't think the basic magic books have very many martial friendly spells.

Basic Magic isn't too powerful, but if I wanted a character with a very specific themed magic (say, Divine for a Paladin), I would use GURPS: Powers and pick/make a Divine power. It can technically be things other than magic, but it's good enough and it's fairly cheap too (like, ten points a level cheap with a shitload of effects for you to play with).

If I wanted a character which was more just "Wizard with armor and a sword", I'd use Sorcery and perhaps limit my schools in order to save on Character Point costs. It's kind of clunky, but the way it works is you get levels of Sorcerous Empowerment to set the max power level for your spells and you can either improvise safely (meaning you only get extremely small effects along the lines of what a Perk would give you), improvise dangerously (a spell that mimicks the power level of an advantage equal to or less than the number of points you've spent on Empowerment), or just outright learn a new spell (which are statted like Advantages and limited by how many points you've pumped into your Empowerment).

Sorcery is very expensive, though, so unless you're in a campaign where you have access to lots and lots of character points (I'd say 200+ is a good measure), it's going to be underwhelming (although arguably better than nothing).

I consider it a Gish. And don't know if others do, but I love the Pathfinder Investigator. You can brew potions ahead of time to hand out at the beginning of the day. Give the fighter bulls strength, it's on them to make it, alchemical allocations and multiple potions that can be redrank. Build able into decent glass cannons. Mine in our group hits harder than anyone else with two hand power attack studied combat shenanigans.

I like bowquisitors a lot as well, good at range with free bane, interesting spell list with good buffs and utilities. Also easy to make into twohand glass cannons as well.

Savage Worlds may have what you are looking for, but I am not familiar enough with it to recommend it in good faith.

Mutants & Masterminds and Strike! both allow a character's powers to be flavored as just about anything, and that includes "gishery," but that may be considered "wishy-washy on the details."

Bear in mind that you need the Alchemist Discovery (Infusion) investigator talent to hand out your extracts to other party members.

I am a fan of nearly all of Pathfinder's 6th-level spellcasters. With the exception of the summoner, they are remarkably well-designed tier 3 classes.

If your GM happens to allow Path of War material, you should look into the alchemist (polymath), investigator (polymath), inquisitor (warpath follower), and warpriest (warpath follower), all of which are both 6th-level spellcasters and 6th-level initiators. They are arguably strict upgrades to their base classes, if only due to how powerful initiators can be in combat.

PF Bard into Dragon Disciple. Started out with high defenses by nabbing a shield, kept it up with crafting until DD started kicking in for more resilience. Fightan with sword and board until natural weapons came up in the same vein. Healed with Cure spells after the fight and used offensive fire spells and enchantments to draw attention off of vulnerable allies or make enemies attack each other.

Red mage is the generalist who does a bit of everything right? Sword&Board&Spells&Buffs&Heals&Skills sounds about right.

Warlock//Swordsage in a gestalt game made for an awesome switch-hitter. Roll to hit at range, ride the blast in, hit with a martial maneuver and then shadow-stride out when things get dangerous.

>PF Bard into Dragon Disciple. Started out with high defenses by nabbing a shield, kept it up with crafting until DD started kicking in for more resilience.

I cannot see how this would be an efficacious build in any way, shape, or form. It might *look* reasonably powerful, but it is a horrifically disjointed build that would be better off as a single-classed bard.

Sword-and-board characters in Pathfinder are generally quite poor, and offensive fire spells are likewise shabby unless you are optimizing a Draconic/Orc bloodline sorcerer or using Dazing Spell.

Wasn't a high-op game so I was doing pretty well, and the DM was kind enough to allow Dragonfire Inspiration at d4s instead of d6's. Mix that with natural attack combos from Dragon Form lategame and a rapid-shooting gunslinger on the team and those few d4's of energy damage added up fast.

What Gish would be good for a Half-Orc? I was thinking fluff-wise more than crunch-wise. basically something that you won't see everyday but something that still kinda fits.

I was thinking Rage Mage or some sort of Warrior/Druid Multiclass.

At what point did people start using the term Gish. When did this become a thing. I thought we were going to take about the game.

>Rage Mage
The 3.5 PrC for it isn't all that great, but it might work if you're not too worried about getting a high power result. There's PF's Bloodrager which is a sort of sorcerous barbarian, D10, full BAB, and rage powers along with casting some spells and getting supernatural abilities kind of like an arcane Paladin. Results vary depending on what kind of Bloodline you pick (Dragon/elemental get you some blasting, but Fey/Undead lines might get you debuffing powers).

Also PF-wise, there's the Rage Prophet prestige class if you can deal with the Oracle (Divine spontaneous caster)/Barbarian mix.

>Warrior/Druid.
Druid into Warshaper, shape-shifting focused combatant of nature who brings the animal kingdom's claws, teeth and stingers to bare against their foes.

Daggerspell Shaper might come up too but I don't remember what it does right now and I'm skyping into my game and getting killed by a Marileth.

There's also always just plain Multi-Classing; Druid/Warblade (Tiger Claw Discipline), though technically you could combo those into Ruby Knight Vindicator (Divine/Martial dual progression) if you're willing to burn a feat to get Turn Plants so that you qualify.

Gish is the old term for Githyanki or Githzerai warrior-wizards in D&D that has long been forgotten in its old use in favor of any martial magician.

Well now that's even more confusing, because that doesn't explain the overabundance of weeb images.

My all-time favorite would have to be 4e's Swordmage, though some might disagree as to whether that counts.

Much as I have grown to dislike 3.PF, the Magus is a cool class. It's one of but a few examples of what Paizo can do when they aren't busy jamming their head into their own colon.

The swordmage in 4e is a cool class, too.

Pretty much everyone in Anima is a gish of some variety, and I like Anima despite it being an incomprehensible clusterfuck.

The various FF TTRPGs I've played have all included the Red Mage, and a few of them have included the FFT style gish classes as well like Fencer and Elementalist. They're a little more hit and miss in that they either do fucking nothing (default Fencer) or break the game over their knee (Blood Price Doublecast Red Mage)

You can blame the Final Fantasy series for that, as it took a lot of inspiration early on from 2e d&d. It popularized and codified the "spellcasting swordsman" archetype in its genre, and when that genre itself became popular here in the west, the eastern imagery and western terminology just sort of stuck.

>overabundance of weeb images
you mean touhoufag?
yeah, he does that

>Blood Price Doublecast Red Mage
That knows attack summons and wears armor to absorb the element of those summons?

That and casting from the hp so restored

Yeah, that was what I was trying to imply.

I know you knew, but I felt the need for conpletion

One interesting form of the gish is the 2e Paladin, since it shows us so much about the game design of the time and how it differs from modern game design.

It's essentially a superpowered version of another class. Mechanically speaking, there is no reason for you to play a Fighter over a Paladin -- the only thing Fighters get that Paladins don't is the option for weapon specialization, and that perk is miniscule compared to all the shiny toys Paladins get. Paladins weren't meant to be balanced against Fighters, at least not mechanically.

The incredibly strict code the Paladins had to adhere to was the price for their power. They aren't allowed to keep their cut of the money they get from adventuring with the party. They can't own more than ten magic items. And, of course, they have to be utter paragons of Law and Good if they want to keep any of what makes their class special.

You would never see a class like that in modern games. People are too afraid to give any player such a distinct mechanical advantage over any other. Gygax had no such qualms.

The swordmage's playstyle is truly very unique and entertaining. It is a shame, however, that the Aegis of Assault swordmage is only worthwhile as a hybrid, and there is virtually no reason at all to ever bother with the Aegis of Ensnarement.

>Much as I have grown to dislike 3.PF, the Magus is a cool class.

The playstyle of the magus is certainly very entertaining if built optimally, especially as a hexcrafter. Unfortunately, there are minimal ways to build such an optimal magus, and many of them invariably involve a scimitar, Shocking Grasp, and/or Dervish Dance.

And the paladin, in turn, is obsoleted by Legends and Lore's priests of Horus (super-paladins with less restrictions due to being Chaotic Good) and priests of Hachiman and Aegir.

>Priests of Hachiman are professional soldiers. They must always be prepared to fight for their lord, can never shirk from battle, and must be in the first rank when battle is joined.
>Requirements: AB same as for a warrior; AL any; WP swords, bows and arrows, dagger, polearm; AR a; SP all, combat, divination, healing, weather; PW 1) use THAC0 and saving throw tables of warrior; 10) favorite sword is given a kami, making it a +3 weapon; TU nil.

>To be a priest of Aegir, a man must be a ship captain. Such men are fighters who worship Aegir and have been granted a few clerical powers on the side. (They are not considered dual- or multi-class; they are simply fighters with extraordinary powers.)
>Requirements: AB fighter; AL any; WP any; AR b; SP all, weather, divination, guardian; PW 1) use spells as a priest; 10) breathe water; TU nil.

That said, weapon specialization on a fighter is still quite useful given some darts.

>And the paladin, in turn, is obsoleted by Legends and Lore's priests of Horus (super-paladins with less restrictions due to being Chaotic Good) and priests of Hachiman and Aegir.
Bloat leads to creep, and creep leads to imbalance. It was inevitable.

D&D classes were never balanced. In earlier editions mages trumped everything, but of course they were super squishy with their low HP and inability to wear armor. As long as you could get a few experience levels in, you'd eventually gain access to spells that could curbstomp any random encounter scaled to your party's challenge level.

Demihumans in the original D&D were treated as their own classes, and had very strict maximum levels in contrast to human characters. Although these characters shined early in the game, they were most certainly started to lag behind when they could no longer gain levels, while their human allies continued to accumulate new feats and more HP.

The ranger is perhaps even more broken than the paladin. Rangers are very difficult to surprise, are masters at tracking, are almost on par with fighters, and have access to some druid and wizard spells. (although, I think rangers have to experience to a higher level than paladins before they start learning spells)

>new feats
Feats weren't a thing pre-3e

I think he meant the term in the general sense, not as the familiar named mechanic.

By feats, I mean the different skills characters acquired at experience milestones, like the fighter gaining additional attacks per round. I'm not sure what these abilities were actually referred to in the manuals.

I think a number of classes were considered "fighting men," or offshoots of the fighter class. So they received some of the same abilities, but usually got them at a slower rate.

Actually made a Red Mage character in Anima. Warlock is a perfect fit for it.
>But hybrids have terrible secondaries, user.
Not if you invest points wisely and don't attempt to min/max. Also, taking Natural Power, so that my spell levels keyed off of POW instead of INT was a good idea, as well as taking Magic Projection as Attack/Defense, so my Attack and Dodge were my casting skills.
Besides, a RDM only needs to cherry pick a few spells: Induce State covers most status effects, Petrify is obvious, Create Energy can be a bare-bones single target Fire/Blizzard/Thudner, Soul Poison is Bio, one of the three healing spells works as a Cure, etc.

>What kinds of gish play would you really like to see?
I'd like to see a gish that doesn't regularly use their magic in combat. In combat, they use their weapons. Out of combat, they perform magic ritual and cast utility spells. Maybe at high levels they get spells that can be used in combat, but they're more like powerful panic buttons than weapons.

I think it'd be a cool way to play an adventurer-researcher sort of character.

It's worth mentioning that going by straight 3d6, you have about a .13% chance to qualify to be a paladin. That's 1 chance in 769.* So it's not like most people have the opportunity to weigh the options of being a fighter and being a paladin.

Personally, I hated this sort of thing about old school D&D. "Hey! You rolled super high and are already getting sizable bonuses from your attributes? Well, since your character is already so much better than everybody else's, you qualify for extra bonuses to make your character even more betterer! You get a bonus to earned experience, so you level quicker! You class caps are higher, so you advance to a higher level! You get percentile strength to boost your bonuses to damage and to-hit through the roof! Oh, and you have access to more and perhaps better classes!" What kind of shit is that?

*See muleabides.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/you-must-be-this-lucky-to-play/

Play the psychic spellcaster Investigator, if you're in Pathfinder. B

Played a synthesist summoner that wore an earth elemental to mine in, but the game collapsed. Then I played a bard with only perform (weapon drill) flavored as being supernally aware and active of what allies were doing and how to help them (so basically a warlord with some magic to back it up) that shot silver light everywhere. That one collapsed too, but both were quite fun.
I'd like to see a game like that, probably steal some inspiration from Fairy Tail. Everyone has magic pools, everyone has physical moves, then you buy ways to modulate either of those. The core cast includes an obnoxiously tanky guy who learned dragon magic by living with one for years (and is obnoxiously tanky because the dragon didn't feel like moving out of the volcano, and wasn't careful enough to not occasionally step on him), an accomplished magician that mostly just uses a spell to swap out her armor and weapons from her warehouses of awesome magic gear, and an elementalist that turns into most of a river to attack.
I think it would be an interesting change; instead of everyone specialising in different areas, make magic strictured enough that everyone can specialise in a different area of magic and not step on each others' toes.

The sort of shit where you were supposed to take the outcome of the dice for what you were playing?
I mean, it's harsh, but there wasn't a lot of "Well, I figured I'd bring a this character with this build to help support the team", it was "Roll the dice, hope you win big, play it out as long as it goes, hope the DM strikes you with lightning if you roll Gully Dwarf."
Much more a roguelike where you make do with what you're given than an RPG where you start out with guaranteed competence and achieve awesomeness by your actions.

Sometimes, the party *IS* Raistlin, Alucard, Scooby, and Shaggy, and it's not immediately a worse story for being so.

>Much more a roguelike where you make do with what you're given
Only new players do that and bored pros. People who really play roguelikes and finish them when allowed to roll stats will roll until they get the stats they need. If they don't they'll play suicidally and see if they can dive too deep to get somethign that's overpowered for their level and come back up.They'll also restart if they don't get their prefered item progression in X levels of a dungeon. It's basicaly be playing with a guy who rolls his character then in 5 seconds of playing goes "My character calls out in anguish at the misdeeds he does and slits his own throat" and proceed to roll up another character while the group gets suicidal fucks that die for a couple of days.

I'm sorry, I didn't realise I was speaking to the Ultimate Arbiter Of Human Thought And Opinions And Taste, my apologies your majestiousness.

>Gish
This word has more connotations than a fighter-mage.

Are you a Githyanki?

As for a game where everyone is some kind of fighter mage, rune quest

I played a swordmage in 4e once, which was quite fun. At the basic end you have sword swings enhanced with elements, magical barriers to help your allies, area spells to help clear out enemies, and later on teleportation to help with positioning.

It really captured a lot of what I want from a Gish. Rather than simply using magic to buff oneself and fight things normally, it blended the swordplay with more raw elemental blasting in an interesting way.

>(Blood Price Doublecast Red Mage)
Backed up by a Critical: Quicken Time Mage inside the effect radius who absorbs only the second element used, of course.
After all, why should the enemy get a turn at all?

Best part about that game.

>not Magik Frenzy Duel-Wield Illusionists

Geomancy Parivir was also a cool example of a Gish rapetrain from FFT. Not as bad as the BP Doublecaster, but more than capable of clearing endgame maps by itself all the same.

Meme concept.

All communicated concepts are made of memes, what's your point?

There's a D&D feat from the 3.0 Splatbook bastards and bloodlines called ancient tradition, it lets you use any stat to use for casting rather than the normal stat for one class, it must be taken at level one though.

Retard poster.

That's how you Muscle Wizard,not how you Gish.

I mean, it would let you streamline your martial and magical skills into one stat which is great for later multiclassing or simplifying the skills you use if your class starts out as a cross between magical and martial.

Basically, Martial Skill =/= Strength. It does help make for a nice synergy though.

>That said, weapon specialization on a fighter is still quite useful given some darts.
Man I miss darts being awesome. How do we bring that back a little?

Is the term "The Gish" really that common? I understand the concept and met with it several times, but it's the first time hearing that name for it - I call it Spellsword or Red Mage most of the time.

It is here and on the 3.PF optimization boards, at least.

It's very common with anyone with a D&D history.

Red Mage has the issue that it's very conflicted in what it is. Red Mage is a 'Jack of all sorts of magic' while Gishes don't tend towards the healing sort.

Yeah the red mage is technically a gish but represents a bit more than that. It's probably fine though.

By makin poison and alchemy viable as well a getting some support for throwing weapons in general similar to the UA weapon feats.

>Sword-and-board characters in Pathfinder are generally quite poor
Sword and board scales pretty well thanks to the relative cheapness of armor/shield enchants. If you can meme Shield Mastery onto your feat list via Ranger combat style (preferably without actually being a Ranger), you turn into a monster.

Sanctified Slayer Inquisitor for instance can pick up heavy armor proficiency, craft magic weapon/armor, and extra slayer talent as feats. By level 9, you've crafted yourself +5 full plate and a +5 shield (which also functions as a +5 weapon) for only 25k gold. Inquisitors are already disgusting stat sticks by that level, and that just turns it up to 11.

I want to fuck that gish

AC is a middling defense by 9th-level. There are so many other ways to shut down your character (combat maneuvers, touch attacks, save-or-lose effects), and all of your AC investments will be meaningless if you are targeted by one of those. Even if there is an enemy who primarily targets non-touch AC, you must expend other character resources to force the enemy to attack you and not one of your allies.

Pathfinder is very much rocket tag at *every* level, and the best defense is *always* an overwhelming, alpha striking offense. Every turn you spend attacking while you have a shield in hand is a turn not spent attacking with a two-handed weapon, such as a greatsword or a longbow. Correct me if I am wrong here, but you cannot even cast somatic-component spells if you have a shield in one hand and a weapon in the other, can you?

That 9th-level inquisitor could have been a human archer with Noble Scion (Narikopolus), Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, Manyshot, and Clustered Shots for feats, laying into enemies with Judgments and four effective attacks each round.

In the event that Path of War initiators are allowed, shield-wielders are *still* worthless because the one and only type of initiator that tries to make shields worthwhile is the warder, and that class has a shieldless archetype (zweihander sentinel) that is plainly better than the base class.

4e made heavy shields ideal for nearly every character who could use them due to adding +2 AC and +2 Reflex in a game wherein two-handed weapons only deal marginally more damage.

The value of shields in 5e is dependent on build. Clerics and College of Valor bards should certainly use them since they cast as often as they attack. Barbarians must avoid them due to having resistance against physical damage anyway. For fighters, paladins, and rangers, it depends on their Fighting Style and whether they are aiming for a Strength build (Shield Master) or a Dexterity build (use a shield with Dueling).

The best kind of Gishes, which I never see enough of, are the ones that combine magic and sword (like just as a shitty example off the top of my head, lighting their sword on fire and making an attack that leaps from enemy to enemy after you hit the first one).

Almost every gish type class I see is "Skyrim with a spell in one hand and a sword in the other." Sometimes there will be one that goes a bit better and let's you smack the spell onto your sword so they both hit at once, but I've not yet seen one that has its own unique "spell list", besides the Swordsage and the other ToB classes.

Are clerics gish? I've done cleric a bunch.

The only arcane gish I ever tried was a Paladin Sorcerer in 3.5.

4e Swordmage was entirely about melding magic and swordplay together.

One of it's basic spells was lashing out with your blade and having phantasmal copies of yourself attack in every direction (To give you a Close Burst 1 attack)

Technically yes.

Gish comes from AD&D, where the Githyanki has fighter/magic-user dual class characters which were called gish. Githzerai had rogue/magic-user dual class characters called zerths that never got the same attention because no one used githzerai.

AC is a middling defense by 9th-level. There are so many other ways to shut down your character (combat maneuvers, touch attacks, save-or-lose effects), and all of your AC investments will be meaningless if you are targeted by one of those. Even if there is an enemy who primarily targets non-touch AC, you must expend other character resources to force the enemy to attack you and not one of your allies.

Pathfinder is very much rocket tag at *every* level, and the best defense is *always* an overwhelming, alpha striking offense. Every turn you spend attacking while you have a shield in hand is a turn not spent attacking with a two-handed weapon, such as a greatsword or a longbow. Correct me if I am wrong here, but you cannot even cast somatic-component spells if you have a shield in one hand and a weapon in the other, can you?

That 9th-level inquisitor could have been a Dexterity/Wisdom race archer with Noble Scion (Narikopolus), Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot, and Manyshot, for feats, laying into enemies with Judgments and four effective attacks each round.

In the event that Path of War initiators are allowed, shield-wielders are *still* worthless because the one and only type of initiator that tries to make shields worthwhile is the warder, and that class has a shieldless archetype (zweihander sentinel) that is plainly better than the base class.

4e made heavy shields ideal for nearly every character who could use them due to adding +2 AC and +2 Reflex in a game wherein two-handed weapons only deal marginally more damage.

The value of shields in 5e is dependent on build. Clerics and College of Valor bards should certainly use them since they cast as often as they attack. Barbarians must avoid them due to having resistance against physical damage anyway. For fighters, paladins, and rangers, it depends on their Fighting Style and whether they are aiming for a Strength build (Shield Master) or a Dexterity build (use a shield with Dueling).

Thematics are important, yo. Not just pure mechanical effaciousness.

Please ensure you keep any such suggested builds to gishes at the same time.

>RuneQuest
Is it any good? Saw it in my FLGS, leafed through a couple pages. Looks like it's mechanically similar to Only War.

You should search more assiduously for "gish"-type classes, then.

D&D 4e offers literally *two dozen* that match your description:
• Ardent
• Artificer
• Assassin (Dragon Magazine version)
• Avenger
• Barbarian, because this is a primal magic-using class
• Barbarian (berserker)
• Bard
• Bard (skald)
• Cleric (templar)
• Cleric (warpriest)
• Druid (sentinel)
• Monk, which is a weapon-using psionic class for all intents and purposes
• Paladin
• Paladin (blackguard)
• Paladin (cavalier)
• Ranger (hunter)
• Ranger (scout)
• Runepriest
• Seeker
• Swordmage
• Warden
• Warlock
• Warlock (hexblade)
• Wizard (bladesinger)

"Gishes" are, in fact, the most common type of class in 4e, and every single one of them has magical powers that accompany weapon attacks.

D&D 5e only really succeeds at the "gish" archetype through the paladin class, which has "smite" spells that work through weapon attacks. The fighter (eldritch knight) has to be an abjuration specialist spamming Shield and Counterspell in practice, the rogue (arcane trickster) does nothing but spam Green-flame Blade while their familiar uses Help actions, and the wizard (bladesinger) truly has no business being in melee.

Your statement is wholly irrelevant to my own.

I was not speaking of the thread's main topic of "gishes." I was contesting 's ignorant claim that shields have actual value in Pathfinder, which was a subject entirely separate to that of "gishes."

Besides, in Pathfinder, inquisitors are very much "gishes" regardless of their choice of weapon.

I don't talk about gish when Touhoufag is around specifically because the only thing he can think about is optimization. Thematics and actual gameplay are irrelevant and he can't shut up long enough for you to discuss anything except builds.

Eh, I'd not call the Ranger a Gish. It's sitting firmly in Martial.

There are, in fact, many optimal "gish" builds for most editions of D&D.

The ranger (hunter) and ranger (scout) are reliant on primal magic "aspect" stances which augment their weapon attacks. They are, in fact, "gishes."

Missing the point entirely, as always.

I mean, they are probably not what you think of Gish when you say it (because of the originals they have heavy Arcane leanings), but it's true, they are warriors who combine (primal) magic with skill with arms.

>due to adding +2 AC and +2 Reflex
That's something I was missing in 5e. A shield reflex bonus makes so much sense.

>shields help you matrix dodge

>shields don't help you block a dragons breath weapon

Sorry man, you've got to be a Shield Master in order to figure that shit out.

Nah, you need a third party feat with prerequisite feat to do that, and it only works with a limited number of large shields.

>Filename related

Yeah yeah I know, but the middle effect should be the default and it should grant some other benefit instead.

That would make shields hella overpowered in 5e.

I never really got into 4e, so I was not aware. From what I've heard though, it's basically "every class has a unique list of combat powers that work vaguely like spells", which does seem like it would work well for what I have in mind. I'd love to try the system at some point, but it's so rare to find a game.

But outside of 4e, still seems very rare. 2e, 3.x, and 5e don't really have anything for that (beyond paladin kind of, with smite spells). I guess Anima kind of has it with martial techniques? But beyond that nothing comes to mind, and I've played a lot of systems. Even FantasyCraft, which I've generally found very flexible, doesn't really have anything for it. I suppose you could use GURPS powers for it, but GURPS is just cheating, because you can roughly aproximate damn near anything.

For who? A dex based shieldbarer proficient in dex saves? How often does that happen? It's basically just Rangers.

I'm not a big fan of 3.PF but it does have a few tier6 gish options that are decent.

Despite what people who have never tried it say, the bard is actually really good. If you focus his feats in combat he can support the party in most roles. Using a decent skill selection between fights, using fascinate to avoid fights or buy to position. At the start of combat he lay down some solid control control spells or buffs and then wade into the fray without too much trouble. Now he probably won't be pulling off any crazy one-shot attacks or game-breaking spells but he will be providing a steady stream of utility in any scenario.

The Occultist from pathfinder is also sort of along that line. He might be a bit more powerful in general but it's a really fun class to play. It all boils down to being a tough swiss army knife that runs on item charge. It's the same playstyle as the bard but more flashy, with meaner, more flexible spells and better self buffs for combat. The cost being a less kick-ass skill list and reliance on the ability charges you get for each class of ability. So the Occultist is more resource management for a bit more bang.

Effectively both play a role similar to the one wizards are supposed to, utility and control but do it thru multiple means instead of just spell use. I find it makes for more interesting play since your various means come to to more than just expending a spell. Do you risk your HP for a direct approach? Puzzle your way out with the aid of skill rolls? Or do you use a spell and if so how do you use it.

I fucking love gish, but sadly the only thing that people will play around me is 5e, so those types are limited and not that powerful as full specialization one way or the other.

I like the Eldritch Fighter archetype, but it's pretty pointless seeing has how just hitting them with a full round of attacks outdamages their Spell + 1 Attack combo. Plus it only gets a few spell slots and it's restricted to two schools. It's still the most viable gish, though.

Warlock with Pact of the Blade is kind of a step in the right direction but really, you don't need to do much more than hang back and cast Eldritch Blast over and over while your pact wep can only make two attacks. Free limitless use of Mage Armor and whatnot are nice though.

I suppose a Fighter+Sorcerer/Wizard multiclass would work, but if you split it 50/50 then you'd miss out on an assload of cool shit. like two extra attacks for Fighters and fucking wings for a Sorcerer.

Perhaps a full Wizzy/Sorc with a few feats like Weapon Master, Tough, and the armor feats would be adequate, but magic will still be your go-to offense since magic still outdamages melee by a hilarious margin.

Maybe I should just forego any notion of optimization and just have fun.

The only truly effective and optimal "gishes" in 5e are clerics with Shillelagh, bards (college of valor) who might just pick up Shillelagh anyway, single-classed paladins, and rogues (arcane tricksters) with Green-flame Blade and Find Familiar.

People speak of paladin/warlock "gishes" as if they were worthwhile, but I hardly see the point. The warlock's spell slots return after only an *hour-long* short rest, and the single-classed paladin has many strong class features to offer.

The sorcerer (favored soul) still has very little reason to physically attack.

Is this a gish?

L5R is good for making gishes.