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View Full Version : "I'm not gonna let anything happen to you" [3.5]



Zaq
2009-10-12, 10:50 PM
Before we start, a few acknowledgments, recognitions, disclaimers, whatever you want to call them... basically, I'm just saying this so you know that I already know it and don't have to bother pointing it out.

GRANTED, that "turtling" in 3.5 is a poor option, and

GRANTED, that the best way to protect yourself or your friends from harm is to make your enemy unable to hurt you, usually by killing, and

GRANTED, that all the best buffs in 3.5 are personal anyway...

Given all that, here's my thought experiment for tonight. How would you go about making the ultimate protective caster? One who focuses on making his allies damn near immune to danger? Protecting yourself isn't good enough, and making them more dangerous is a strictly secondary concern. I'm interested in making a character who is really, really good at defending his allies magically. Defensive buffs are this character's bread and butter. He might even use some normally frowned-upon tricks in the name of defense... for example, using Celerity to interrupt an enemy's attack on his friend and cast another defensive spell on them. (I'd like to consider the character both with and without the nastier options like that... both "playing nice" and "not playing nice," in other words.) How would you go about making a very strong protective caster?

As is usual with my thought experiments, the lower the level, the better. Level 20 builds make me yawn. Level 3 or 6 builds, those are exciting. I'd call level 10 the upper limit of good taste, though that's not to say that we can't talk about higher level folk. Just that if you take until then to come into your own, I don't really care about you.

A few possibilities I've idly considered, though none of these have been thought all the way through:

Favored Souls get an ACF that lets them bestow temporary HP on their allies with nearly any spell. This is a very cool thing. Cleric spells aren't bad for defense, after all.

An Abjurer is of course an interesting choice, with or without Master Specialist.

Whenever you want to deal with helping a lot of allies at once, there's always War Weaver waiting in the wings, but that almost seems too easy. Still, I'd be remiss to simply ignore it.

From the same book, Combat Medic looks interesting. Unfortunately, you don't really care about actually healing allies (a character like this may or may not be able to patch up allies if something breaks through, but we want to prevent damage, not erase it), but Healing Kicker is sort of the idea we're going for here. Unlikely to be the best choice, but still an option.

Most of the best defensive psionic powers are self-only, but I still wonder if there isn't some way that we can use things like Share Pain, some of the tricks of the Guardian mantle, and similar abilities to our ends.

There are some good divine or devotion feats that would help this, but are they the best option? Few scale well, and there seem to be a lot of downsides, but at the same time, they're thematically perfect and mechanically at least a step in the right direction. Getting TU might not be a bad idea.

So basically, anything that makes your allies harder to kill is good. AC, miss chance, immunity to whatever, temporary HP, DR, boosts to saves, all of it's useful. We want it all. You want to let your allies stride confidently into Hell's mouth (or the Abyss's mouth, or the mouth of the dwagon's lair, or Gehenna's mouth, or whatever) without fear for their safety. To that end, all the standard caster rules apply... action economy is good (can anything top War Weaver? I'd hope so, but still), initiative is critical, all that good stuff. I'd like to see just how enduring we can make a character like this... being able to do this longer is, naturally, better. I'd almost lead towards spontaneous casters over prepared ones, because you should be ready for any danger, not just the ones you thought about this morning. I dunno.

So yeah. You can tell I've put some effort into the breadth of this, but not the depth. I'm hoping this discussion will start that. Any ideas, anyone?

jiriku
2009-10-12, 11:03 PM
A basic cleric has access to mass conviction, mass resist energy, heroes' feast, mass spell resistance, and mass death ward. These collectively grant immunity to poison, disease, fear, and death effects, and substantial protection from spells and energy damage.

The spell indomitability negates damage that would reduce an ally below 1 hit point. It's a 5th level wizard spell, but there's a bunch of ways a divine caster can get access to it (spell domain, miracle, archivist learning feature, UMD).

The craft contingent spell feat clearly has a role; if you expect a particular attack, it's pretty easy to prepare a contingent spell to protect against it.

Edit: also, the imbued healing metamagic feat (Complete Champ) provides temp hit points=HD when you cast a healing spell, while healing lorecall (SC) eliminates the dazzled, dazed, fatigued, exhausted, sickened, and nauseasted conditions all at once when you heal. Close wounds (SC) heals/negates 1d4+5 damage as an immediate action and can trigger imbued healing and healing lorecall, making it pretty effective at mid to low levels for negating damage and negative status effects as soon as they're inflicted.

Tyndmyr
2009-10-12, 11:08 PM
Make yourself immortal first before worrying about your allies. Mirror image is a good initial spell, in terms of average damage negated.

There's the usual rounds of buffs....I like to focus on buffs with durations so long they can be cast the night before the adventure, thus not depleting my spells for the day at all. This is a more limited list, but hey...it's worth abusing. Even if it's just having a true strike up on every person, it's worth it. Makes the first encounter use less resources.

Persist and Extend are obvious metamagic choices for the defensive wizard, whom I herby dub the "Bubble Wizard". Iot7V is probably the ideal PRC.

Greater Mage Armor is a must, as it has solid duration, can be cast on others, and frankly, high AC is a bit of a staple.

Craft Magic Tattoo is slightly annoying, in that it has a component with a cost, and you'll likely cast it enough to blow a good chunk on it if you keep the party routinely buffed with the allowed three each, but it's still probably worthwhile.

The resistance line is also likely to be helpful. The greater and superior flavors of these, again, have a 24 hr duration, so can be cast the night before. Also, can be made permanent. Unless dispelling is a quite frequent threat, this is bound to be superior to cloaks of resistance.

Of course, all the basic energy resistances, and more importantly, the mass variants of same.


I would probably rank save boosters and immunities/counter abilities the highest. Flight will keep the footies away, true seeing prevents all manner of nasty surprises, and failing saves is always bad. AC is probably the least important, but it's easy to get in large chunks, so you may as well.

Edit: I love the concept, by the way. It might not be as easy as say, battlefield control, but a purely defensive/protective caster strikes me as an interesting way to play.

Thajocoth
2009-10-12, 11:40 PM
Petrify them. They're now a lot harder to damage.

Eloel
2009-10-12, 11:49 PM
Petrify them. They're now a lot harder to damage.

Stone Shape makes them need a true resurrection. :smallbiggrin:

Lycanthromancer
2009-10-12, 11:57 PM
My favorite one starts at level 7.

Egoist with a psicrystal. Turn your psicrystal into an adamantine obdurium box (with extra hardness, even). Which can now fly of its own accord (at 9th level) and can sprout legs and climb around, and has 180-degree vision in all directions. It can delay its actions to move before and after an ally goes, so that it moves out of the way when necessary, and moves back in to act as cover when needed.

Also allows you to pull a Big Guy is With Me offensive move, too.

[edit] Beyond that, a level 1 shaper can pull out amber hamster balls using psionic minor creation.

Iku Rex
2009-10-13, 06:09 AM
You want a dragonblooded sorcerer with wings of cover (lv2 Sor, from races of the Dragon) in order to giver adjacent allies cover as an immediate action.

Volkov
2009-10-13, 07:05 AM
Screw your allies, kill them and take their stuff, they're only slowing you down. Oh wait, that's my old epic level mind flayer psion talking.

I'll be leaving now. >.>

JeenLeen
2009-10-13, 07:57 AM
The War Weaver PrC from Heroes of Battle is an arcane buffer PrC. It's only a 5 level progression class, so you could finish it at level 10.

You lose one caster level, but you gain the ability to create a 'weave' that lets you cast spells at +1 range category (touch become short range, for example; personal excluded) to your allies as long as you have line of sight. You still pay full material components or xp per char buffed, but you only use one casting of the spell. For example, you can Resist Energy the entire party for one spell slot.
You also gain a feature that lets you store (IIRC, at level 5) 3 buffs in your weave to release as a move action. Good action economy and nice for the start of a battle.

Protection from x, Fly, Spiderskin, Stoneskin, and Indomitablity are very nice for this. If you can use immediate action spells, Nerveskitter can be useful as well. Even Create Magic Tattoo at the beginning of the day for a party buff (although it makes very little sense if you read the spell's fluff.)

Edit: a Minor Metamagic Rod of Extend is good for the hour/level spells. Also, a Master Specialist in Abjuration has some increases to your protective magic, but they don't get the best (personal spells become touch 3/day) until level 10.

Douglas
2009-10-13, 08:35 AM
Spellguard of Silverymoon gives the ability to cast personal range spells on other people at level 4 provided they satisfy a certain definition of "defensive". I think the class requires 4th level spells to enter, though, so that ability doesn't become available until character level 11.

oxinabox
2009-10-13, 09:11 AM
I know MArshal has a bad rep, but still.
Mintitures handbook.
Create Aura's (iirc can have like 1 major and 1 (maybe more) minaor aura). that are active all the time.
The do things like DR, and bunus on saves and some bonus to confirm.

haven't looked at for ages.

I thionk some the the leader classes, dread commando, dread pirate, War cheif, might be worh looking up.


Can we turn Bards inispere courage into inspire AC?
Is't there something in CompChamp?

Arbitrarity
2009-10-13, 09:18 AM
Team Solar (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81794) seems to have the buffing down. Mostly with heavy use of incantatrix and Spellguard of Silverymoon.

Tyndmyr
2009-10-13, 05:05 PM
My ultimate paranoid build consisted of a bunch of casters sitting around the tavern, boozing it up. We used undead minions to haul around a ring gate, while we had the other with us.

Now, we can cast spells via the ring gate, and thus kill(or immobilize for the undead to kill) anything found. Non recharged traps are handled by using your disposable minions. Killed things that can be animated are used to replenish your minions. Light, expensive loot can be shoved through the ring gate. The weight capacity is too low to allow anything of medium size or larger through, so no danger of frenzied barbarians coming through.

Now, we get to the good part. Both rings have an entry and and exit side. Your undead minion is obviously holding his ring so the exit side is facing away. This poses an obvious problem for anyone wishing to get to you. Should that be overcome, you guys are all huddled around the entry side on your ring gate, and have no particular reason to need the exit side most of the time. Be creative with what is just on the other side of that ring.

Keep some small(or fine/tiny, if you can get em) minions with you, in case something inexplicably wipes out all your remote minions. Send him through to retrieve the other ring.

Dragonmuncher
2009-10-13, 06:18 PM
Resilient Sphere (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/resilientSphere.htm).

Granted, it doesn't let them do much besides give them time to heal themselves/buff themselves, but it works great if you want to be able to concentrate on killing the baddies without worrying that your charge will die.

It's a 4th level spell, so there are a lot of other spells you might want to use- Stoneskin, Solid Fog, Wall of Fire/Ice, Greater Invisibility, and Polymorph come to mind, and that's just for spells that could be used for protection. 4th has a lot of good spells.

Still, I always thought Resilient Sphere was a very cool spell, that could be very useful if used creatively.

Lycanthromancer
2009-10-13, 07:54 PM
The Big Guy is With Me is pretty darned awesome. Similar (actually, identical :smallwink:) to the egoist 7 I posted earlier in the thread, once you hit higher levels you can buff your psicrystal from a distance. This level decreases dramatically with iterations of Improved Psicrystal.

I had one that had a ton of buffs (and body adjustment for healing), which basically granted the psicrystal just about any immunity you could imagine.

1. Keep up share pain all the time, and vigor whenever things looked potentially dangerous.
2. Against low-threat creatures, a single manifestation of metamorphosis should suffice to bring down the encounter. Go pet rock go!
3. Against creatures of world-shattering power, and against critters several CRs higher than you, manifest the following (novabuff!):

Extended temporal acceleration (shared between self and psicrystal),
Psionic telekinetic sphere (around yourself),
Fission (self-only, for extra buffage),
Metamorphosis,
Greater concealing amorpha,
Oak body,
Psionic iron body,
Shadow body,
Energy adaptation,
Summon cerebrilith (from CPsi),
Fusion (between cerebrilith and psicrystal)
The celestial powers from CPsi

As well as any other psionic buffs you care to name. You can use fewer powers than that if you want to save power points or feel the threat isn't worth this level of overkill.

The best part is that you can manifest crystal swarm through your psicrystal for extra, unavoidable damage. :smallsmile:

Toliudar
2009-10-13, 08:13 PM
I'd favour cleric X / Hierophant 1 to get the reach ability, and chaining lots and lots of buffs. DMM (Chain), Extend spell if you think you have to.

Tokiko Mima
2009-10-13, 08:49 PM
Flesh to Stone > Rock to Mud > Purify Water, and let them evaporate or pour them into the ocean. I'd like to see anyone do damage to them now!

Thajocoth
2009-10-13, 08:56 PM
Flesh to Stone > Rock to Mud > Purify Water, and let them evaporate or pour them into the ocean. I'd like to see anyone do damage to them now!

You've actually given me an idea... (DM-side)

Siosilvar
2009-10-13, 09:13 PM
Petrify them. They're now a lot harder to damage.

Stone Shape makes them need a true resurrection. :smallbiggrin:

Flesh to Stone > Rock to Mud > Purify Water, and let them evaporate or pour them into the ocean. I'd like to see anyone do damage to them now!

... you can't guard them very effectively if they're dead. Defeats the purpose of guarding people in the first place.

Tyndmyr
2009-10-13, 09:16 PM
Death is the only true safety. Nothing can ever hurt them again.

Thurbane
2009-10-13, 09:27 PM
As above, War Weaver is great for this. Maybe throw in some Abjurant Champion so you can cast abjuration spells as a swift action.

Tokiko Mima
2009-10-13, 11:37 PM
... you can't guard them very effectively if they're dead. Defeats the purpose of guarding people in the first place.

Ah, but the beauty of Flesh to Stone is it doesn't kill you. You're in a state of being neither alive nor dead. Apply a Stone to Flesh spell and you're back to life, just like nothing happened. The spell states that you retain injuries you suffer in your statue form, but you'll be alive if only momentarily.

So the person you're protecting still exists, and therefore cannot be resurrected. They just exist in a suspended state spread out into the atmosphere or ocean. The only way to kill them would be collecting their various component water molecules back together, and transforming them back to flesh. Other than that they're immune to almost anything, short of the planet falling into the sun. Even then, with magic there's probably a way....