Casting Spells in Armor?

The Warmage class, from Complete Arcane, has the ability to cast spells without chance of failure in light and then medium armours as it levels up.
The Battle Caster feat from the same book increases this by one step, from light to medium and then medium to heavy.
For other spellcasting classes, the Spellsword prestige class from Complete Warrior allows one to ignore steadily greater spell failure %, starting at 5% and increasing to 30%, though spellcaster progression only increases every other level.

So should someone never do anything with their girlfriend, because they might breakup one day?
By that attitude, why would you get into a relationship at all?

play psionics

or just a cleric

Play a Duskblade and take Battle Caster. At 4th level, you can tromp around in heavy armor with no ACF. You're only a half caster but you have full BAB.

Okay, because Veeky Forums is fucking retarded, I will answer your question OP.

1 - Still Spell, Armor Proficiency . 2 Feats to do it, but if you play a Human wizard, go for it.

2 - Similar, but multiclass Fighter/Wizard. Has the advantage of opening up the Eldritch Knight PrC.

3 - One of the Complete books, either Mage or Arcane has a Feat that reduces your ASF. Then you stack armor properties that reduce it further - a Masterwork Mithril Chain Shirt will reduce it down to 5%.

4 - Play a Shadowcaster from Tome of Magic. When your Mysteries become Spell-Like Abilites, they'll ignore ASF.

5 - Realize that AC is stupid, and you're better off switching to the Miss Chance % meta - Mirror Image, Blur, Displacement, Blink, Etherealness and so on. So essentially, play to the strength of the Wizard.

Duskblade 4 w/ battle caster into Abjurant Champion 10 looks like a good progression. If it even goes further, I guess I could go Eldritch Knight or back to Duskblade.

1. Casters are OP they don't need armor.
2. Divine casters don't have spell failure
3. Some arcane caster classes ignore spell failure for certain armors.

Have you considered playing 4e, OSR, or even 5e?

Way to be completely unhelpful

Duskblade
Hexblade
Couple of feats
etc

Simple solution is just to ignore it for PCs only. They can be better than average mages or some shit, I don't know. This is pretty simple my man.

Unearthed Arcana's Battle Sorcerer grants light armor proficiency with no spell failure, along with 3/4 BAB, d8 hit die, and a martial weapon prof of your choice, at the cost of one spell slot and one spell known per spell level.

Exactly.

>missing the point
not trying to play a full wizard that also gets armor. im wanting to play a spellblade type character. but as was already mentioned earlier in the thread, Duskblade -> Abjurant Champion seems to be the progression for optimal slashy-spelly-fun-times

duskblade is really fun

>That Guy who chooses the most powerful class and complains that it isn't powerful enough

How do you people exist just read the thread before replying moron he already said he has his answer

Swordmage exists in 4e

Swordmage is light armor.

You can, however, just get heavy armor with any class, arcanes included, through feats (or, most likely, hybriding).

rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/18468/how-do-i-handle-arcane-spell-failure

I'd copypaste but this is pretty thorough.

1: Wear armour that has 0% Armour Spell Failure chance. Do this by making super expensive armour with a load of special materials that remove armour spell failure.

2: Play a bard, they can wear light armour without any casting issue. Or beguiler, battle sorcerer, dread necromancer, duskblade, hexblade, spellthief, warlock or warmage.

3: bunch of other methods like getting prestige class options that give no ACF.

Prestige classes from dragonlance "age of mortals" = Warmage.
Just water it down and use the errata in the main campaign book else they'll blow everything up out of the water and one or 2 shot anything. By anything I do mean anything.
5 levels to the class. At 1 3 and 5 they get a +1 bonus to every die of damage with a damaging spell they cast.
The errata caps it at times per day = to ether their con or int. Don't remember which. If you don't I can safely tell you it's probably the most OP damage cannon in the history of 3.5 or probably any Veeky Forums game on the planet. Not even joking.
The Thorn knight Prestige class in the main campaign book is decent as well because both classes reduce spell failure chance.
There's lots of perks to both but also some strict prerequisites.
You pretty much have to spend all of your feats carefully and gear them towards the classes to get them as soon as they are available.
Can't even do either as soon as they're accessible spell caster wise if non human. That extra feat makes it and breaks it.
Ran a 1-20 campaign and one of the players maxes out both prestige classes like a boss and was rocking half plate by the end I think.
Also spell failure only counts towards spells with somatic components.

To be completely inside D&D rules, just cast Mage Armor. It's a hour/level duration 1st level spell that grants you a set of force armor with 4 AC. You can choose the visual effects of your spell, so just say it's a piece of chainmail. As you grow in levels, trade it for Greater Mage Armor, which is the same but grants 6 AC. Say your armor looks like a set of fullplate. One level in Paragnostic Apostle nets you +2 to those, so by level 5 you can have your +8 AC fullplate. You can even enchant your robes to get armor enchants, as normal clothes count as 0AC armor. Just subtract one 1st-level spell slot you have per day and note it somewhere "1st level slot for armor". Trade it for a 3rd one at caster level 5.

So, yeah, you can replicate the whole armor thing with spells, and look cool doing so. It's actually better than armor, because it's a Force effect, which means incorporeal beings can't ignore it and touch your skin like usual armor. It's a free Ghost Touch effect.

Also, look for Pearl of Power in the DMG - it lets you retrieve one spell cast per day, so you can quite literally buy your Mage Armor daily use for 1,000gp, or your Greater Mage Armor for 9,000gp. You're effectively buying armor at this point, and it doesn't cost you spell slots anymore. Every mechanical and appearance effects of actually having armor is covered at this point, so you can honestly say "I've bought this armor, it's a good armor, and I can cast while wearing it with no penalties".

I'm this guy I'd also like to point out you don't get penalties while wielding a big-ass sword. You can also have a 2H sword and cast the Shield spell, to have a floating, circular shield of force appear around you when you are attacked. With this and Mage Armor, you get +8 AC with 2 level 1 spells. Mage Armor lasts the whole day, and Shield can be cast while closing in to combat.

If you ever need more duration, Extend Spell is a metamagic feat that doubles the duration of a spell while increasing its used slot by 1(so Mage armor is cast as a 2nd level spell and lasts for 2 hours/level). A Lesser Extend Rod lets you cast spells from levels 1~3 with the same Extend effect three times per day, and costs 3,000gp. It's a great Rod to have around, because you can double the duration of any low level spell like summons and such, and early on your round/level spells won't last the whole combat without it. You can also use it to cast spells outside of combat, to cover your buffs. It's a move action to take out an item and another one to put it away, and you can do it for free while moving. Managing your rods is standard Wizard play, so you might find great use in one rod or two.

Man up and pick up pathfinder. The magus class is exactly what you're trying to do.

The Magus is just a different take on the Duskblade.

Yes, one that doesn't have to jump through hoops to cast spells in armor.

Duskblade actually gets medium armor 3 levels before Magus. After that, he only needs a feat (or just use mithral heavy armor).

Magus gets heavy armor at level 13. Duskblade gets it at 4 with a feat.