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Here Liadon, here's a good pic of you.  You sure seem to carry a rifle pretty often :-P

Or this?

Holy cow man! I just saw this. Sorry to hear that bro-get well soon.

For any who may know who this is: R.I.P Dave Brockie (aka Oderus Urungus), August 30, 1963-March 23, 2014.

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Dbnm-0r3suM

I just wanted to give a quick shout out to all the folks who I have RP'd with over the last few days. I'll probably butcher several names but, you get the idea :-P

Laidon (of course :-P ), Daeatria (especially!), Logarti, "Elf", Dwaerhedd, Elerosse "Clay", Kelendel, Alameth, Vaesi, Mirabell, and some others I'm probably forgetting. Thanks for a great time!

Gotcha. Last summer-ish I went on extended hiatus, and at that time they were as FW gave . So the only change seems to be that the soft-cap was lowered from 9th to 8th, but all else is the same. Cool beans, thanks gentlemen :-)

Heya all!

I've been gone for quite a while, as RL often gets in the way. As the title implies: What are the caps/what is the new system? I read a (now locked) thread discussing the experience caps and suggestions for them, but no one actually said what they -are-. I can find the listing on the old forums, but not on this one; from the sounds of things, the caps have apparently changed since then. Please note, this is not an attempt to pick up where any other threads on this topic have left off or open a grudge session, but to see in writing what the current system is (at which point, I would respectfully request an administrator lock this post as well). Thank you!  

I'm sure you've already seen this, but if not here is something someone has done that is very similar to the direction you are heading in many regards. (Not sure why, but this link only works if you copy/paste it into your browser for some reason; otherwise it tells you there is no text for that page and leaves all after the comma off of the link it opens.)

www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Swordmage,_Variant_(3.5e_Class)

Personally, if I were converting it, I'd leave the light armor available like he did. The 4e version also can wear cloth and leather, so light armor isn't really over-balanced imo; the NWN engine leaves chain shirts off the light armor list anyway, so you'd still be within the 4e criteria for the most part, liberally interpreting leather to cover hide and studded and leaving padded classified as cloth. A melee class that only has 6 -very- short lived shots of armor and an over-lapping deflection bonus (which they don't even get until 7th level) between 1st-12th level (technically 2nd and 13th due to NWN engine's limitations on custom base classes) seems terribly ineffective. Since armor bonuses to AC don't stack, the blinkplate abilities would just give them a short term slight buff beyond what their armor provides (+3 max in studded leather) until such a time as they get enchanted armor of high enough quality to make the low level blinkplate obsolete, but by that time they'll get the improved version (much like a F/M build who no longer has to use mage armor and moves on to improved mage armor). Yes, they get some other boons like their shield benefit, but so do other F/M classes, who stack armor (either by still spell feat or class design for bladesingers and spell swords); many of said F/M builds armor buff durations, with the exception of shield, last for hours rather than rounds, and they have access to them far earlier than the swordmage. 

 I think a compromise between what he gives the class for art/incantation function and what you propose would be the most balanced approach. You give fewer tiers, but limit each tier to 6 times per day. Considering your main source of armor comes from these 6 uses per day, as a melee character you'll likely spend most of those 6 on the blinkplates at those tiers and enjoy the other abilities far less, which means a non-existent AC (compared to even the group's mage, who will be rocking his hours-long mage armor) or less damage because you are saving your uses for blinkplate (or both when you run dry of daily uses). The author of the above conversion goes wildly the other way, and allows up t 9th level effects which can be renewed over and over again, making them all usable multiple times per day as long as you take 5 to ready them all again (you get a certain # of arts that can be readied, and only used once, until readied again, which you can do by simply meditating for 5 minutes). This is a bit much in my opinion, as you get a lot of readied arts/incantations already, some quite powerful even compared to wizard spells, and you can reset them all after each combat. Lastly, in 4e, many of these abilities are encounter abilities, which means they can be used each new combat, thus the short durations make perfect sense. But when they are limited to a 6/day-use pool shared with your other abilities, the durations become inappropriately short imo. 

 Perhaps a more balanced approach then is meshing these two ideas; far fewer tiers of powers with more realistic affects as you have done, but making some of them either longer durations, such as replace the proposed blinkplate and greater BP effects you have with mage armor and improved mage armor effects for example; a little loss on AC bonus is worth the duration increase, especially if you stick with no armor. -Or-, make them feats that must be activated during combat, similar to expertise or defensive casting. This limits them somewhat by having them spend an action to activate them each combat, but stays more in line with an "encounter power" mentality that they have in 4e. I only recommend the feat solution/duration increases for the armor effects mind you, not the other abilities (and even then only if you continue to disallow armor for your version). If the blinkplate effects operate similar to expertise/improved expertise, then a 6/day use of the incantation tiers becomes more than sufficient, as they work mainly like spontaneous spells in practical function and the player can make more use of the other really cool abilities within the incantation tiers. Likewise, your more limited tier system is far more balanced at that point than the link above, whether they are allowed to wear armor or whether the blinkplate incantations are increased in duration/granted as feats.

This, if made to be able to somehow sustain their position in melee long term, would be a very appealing class that would give little reason to multi-class. Placing many of the abilities higher in the level progression makes dipping of any sort more limiting than beneficial imo, discouraging attempts to power-build with it. I hope these suggestions are helpful (rather than critical, antagonistic or impractical). I've played fighter/mage types since the original dungeons and dragons and seen a lot of cool things come and go. What you are working on here has a lot of promise with a fresh and appealing flavor (like some of the base classes in pathfinder). I definitely look forward to seeing it grow into a functional reality :-)