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View Full Version : [3.5] Advice for sneaky, backstabby caster



Naia
2010-06-24, 04:22 PM
Greetings all! :smallsmile:

I've been away from D&D for a decade but am now taking it up again. Completely overwhelmed and headspun by the sheer number of books, I now turn to the Playground for some no doubt excellent advice.

I want to make a (probably Neutral) female Changeling PC with emphasis on stealth, bluff, backstabbing/sneak attack and casting - starting at level 1.

I'm thinking rogue/beguiler with a PrC or two later on. She doesn't need to be fully optimized - it's more a question of getting the feel right.
Am I completely foolish for that multiclassing?
Any advice for PrCs? Feats? (sooo many - cannot choose... :smalltongue:)
So far I think most books are allowed.

Oh - and she fights with weighted chains (a houserule bludgeoning variant of spiked chains) and sai (like the monk weapon). She is proficient with these, because she hails from the far east, so no feat necessary for those...

I would very much appreciate any and all inputs. Thanks in advance! :smallsmile:

Grumman
2010-06-24, 04:29 PM
For PrCs, you definitely want something that advances both your sneak attack and your arcane spellcasting. Unseen Seer (Complete Mage) is the main one, since Spellwarp Sniper (Complete Scoundrel) doesn't work with Beguiler and Arcane Trickster (DMG) isn't as useful.

onthetown
2010-06-24, 04:32 PM
The Avenger (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070401a) gets a bit of a spell list. Their Death Attack is kind of nice, too... I'm playing one right now and she doesn't really cast many spells, though. Not much opportunity for them.

Merk
2010-06-24, 04:36 PM
There are some PRCs that combine rogues and casters well, but a beguiler is meant to do that from the get-go, and losing a beguiler level hurts, especially since they get new spells on odd levels (4th, 6th, etc.). Sneak attacking with beguiler levels is also a bit difficult, as beguilers get poor BAB.

A couple of alternatives (not necessarily better, but just to consider):

1) Factotum (Dungeonscape) is a rogue-ish class that can sneak attack / get bonus dice and do a very limited amount of casting. It's very reliant on intelligence and gets all skills as class skills.

2) Swordsage (Tome of Battle) can also be rogue-ish, has a stance that grants sneak attack, and gets lots of cool maneuvers that can feel like spellcasting. You could even try to convince your DM to let you use an Arcane Swordsage, who trades out maneuvers for some spellcasting.

Other options: Pure rogue with 1 swordsage level, or pure beguiler with 1 mindbender level.

Feats: Your two most important feats, in my opinion, are Darkstalker (Lords of Madness) and Craven (Heroes of Ruin, I think). Darkstalker forces spot/listen checks against your hide/move silently checks even if the thing you're sneaking past has weird senses like blindsense. Craven makes you more vulnerable to fear effects, but you get your character level as a bonus to all sneak attacks. If you do take more beguiler levels, you can go into the Mindbender prestige class and then get the Mindsight feat. Mindbender 1 gives you 100 ft. of telepathy, and Mindsight turns that into brain radar. Factotums can do that too.

It really depends on whether your focus is sneak attacking or casting. If you want better sneak attack, you don't want physically weak classes so much unless you have some way to compensate (inspiration, wands of divine power, etc.), and if you're casting, you typically don't want to give up caster levels.

Naia
2010-06-24, 04:57 PM
Thanks for the advice! They all sound good so I'll read up on them.
*graps a book* :smallbiggrin:

Curmudgeon
2010-06-24, 05:32 PM
The Avenger (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070401a) gets a bit of a spell list.
I just wanted to point out that the Avenger PrC was an April Fool's joke, never intended for actual play.

Fax Celestis
2010-06-24, 05:36 PM
I just wanted to point out that the Avenger PrC was an April Fool's joke, never intended for actual play.

It's an assassin with the alignment restriction filed off. Who cares?

Eldariel
2010-06-24, 05:49 PM
I think Rogue/Wizard is perfect for you. Rogue/Beguiler is a bit redundant; you'll want to enter a PrC that advances Sneak Attack anyways so Beguiler's skillpoints are only gained for few levels and after that, you're left with a spell list that doesn't work at all with sneak attacking (lacks Rays and in general, offensive spells you'd use for that) and little else. Plus, Wizards are really good.

I was playing a character to this effect in a PbP (which, unfortunately, seems to have died): Arathion (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=153187)
He's a Rogue 1/Wizard 3, on his way to Rogue 1/Wizard 4/Unseen Seer 10 (the last levels would probably be in Spellwarp Sniper, Arcane Trickster or something more generic like Incantatrix). Unseen Seer is in Complete Mage, Spellwarp Sniper in Complete Scoundrel and Incantatrix in Player's Guide to Faerun. Arcane Trickster is in the Dungeon Master's Guide.


The idea is that Rogue gives you lots of skillpoints to start with. Therefore, your first level is in Rogue. This also opens up Sneak Attack from Unseen Seer, and gives you Trapfinding.

After that though, as you need Wizard-levels to gain access to higher level spells (which are the real treasure of D&D), no more casting levels should be lost. To this effect, Wizard covers the levels before entering the prestige class. Finally, on level 6, you can take the first level of Unseen Seer which marries skill points, casting and sneak attack.


How I made it work:

Attributes: You obviously want to maximize Intelligence for skillpoints, search/disable device and Wizard casting. Dexterity is a solid secondary stat for initiative, ranged attack rolls (or melee with Weapon Finesse if you're interested in that), AC and many key Rogue skills. Constitution rounds this out, giving you some durability, fortitude-saves and boosting the all-important Concentration-skill.

As I was the skillmonkey of the party, I wanted to cover all relevant skills and thus pumped Charisma with the rest. This would allow efficient use of Charm Person, Planar Binding and company in the future too. To this effect, I picked Gray Elf (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/elf.htm#grayElf) as my race; Elf Wizard has some wonderful alternative class features and getting +2 Intelligence & Dexterity costing irrelevant Strength, and annoying -2 to Constitution.

Lesser Tiefling [Player's Guide to Faerun] would bypass the Con-penalty, but have a Cha-penalty which would've been just as bad for me, and it lacks the perks of being an Elf (Spot, Listen & Search-bonuses, automatic Search for secret doors, Bow proficiencies, Elf Wizard Substitution levels, etc.), so I decided losing 2 points of Strength is an easy trade for being an Elf. Besides, I like Elves.

Note that the character is very feat-hungry as I used many feats to cover some holes in the build including one Human-specific feat; as the DM agreed to allow me to take it as an Elf, I went with that but otherwise I would have played a Human. The attribute bonuses from being an Elf are wonderful, but if you cannot get DM to allow Able Learner [Races of Destiny] for non-Humans, go Human.
Skills: As I mentioned earlier, I managed the skillpoints by taking Rogue-level first. This gives you 8+Intx4 skillpoints to fool around with. That's a lot, especially with Gray Elven Int.

Then there's a rule in Player's Handbook II for retraining skills. Specifically, when you are about to gain a level, you may "lose" up to 4 ranks in a skill and add them to another skill. This allows you to "move" ranks from the Rogue-levels to the Wizard-levels (where you'll gain 6 skills less per level) each time you level-up; thanks to this, I managed to keep all my key skills almost maxed throughout the Wizard-levels in spite of gaining less points; I was moving points from less important skills to more important skills as I gained level and could put more points to those skills.

Do mind that the skill you move these points to has to be a class skill for your new class (in this case, Wizard) so move them to something like Spellcraft or Concentration, leaving those untouched otherwise.

Finally, I used three key feats to cover more skills.
Feats: Feats are, as always, the lifeblood of a character in specializing and making things work. In my case, I really wanted to make the character a good skill monkey. To that effect, I had many things going my way; Rogue has a good skill list, Wizard covers some of what Rogue is missing and Int and Dex govern many of the important skills.

However, there's still things I could improve on: Charisma and Wisdom cover few important groups of skills and those aren't naturally going to be all that high. Further, while Int gives me a decent amount of skillpoints, being a spellcaster eats some of that which might leave one with too few of them. And finally, the class skill system is going to eat up on skillpoints like crazy when multiclassing, if one still wants to maximize the Rogue-skills. I solved these things with feats.


The big ones:
- Able Learner [Races of Destiny]: This allows you to buy ranks in cross-class skills (such as Spellcraft for Rogue or Sleight of Hand for Wizard) only paying 1 point per rank. Normally you have to pay 2 points per rank when taking ranks in a cross-class skill.

This is absolutely necessary for the character as otherwise you can't really advance Rogue-skills during Wizard-levels efficiently, and you'll miss out on few key skills even over the Unseen Seer-levels. This also allows dabbling (without excess investment) in stuff that isn't a class skill for either like Speak Language or Psicraft, if you feel so inclined.

- Nymph's Kiss : This isn't strictly necessary, but it grants you +1 skillpoint per level, which is absolutely lovely with your immense skill list, [B]and it also grants you with a +2 bonus to Charisma-based checks (skill and otherwise; hello Charm Person!); Charisma is a stat you won't be buffing much otherwise so this helps a ton with stuff like Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, Gather Information and so on. Also, Use Magic Device. You also get +1 to saves vs. spells and fey regard you as if you were fey.

Then again, elves are pretty much fey anyways so that's not very important. The biggest issue is that this means you need to be good. And not just good, but Exalted, which has huge requirements. Then again, if you can get a bit of DM leniency in that regard (or cut some of the benefits), or want to play the beloved of a Nymph, this is perfect.

- Keen Intellect [Dragon Magazine #323]: This feat is in an obscure location. That said, it's wonderful for the build. Why? Well, it's hard to get high Int, Dex, Con, Cha and Wis. This pretty much removes Wis from the equation; basically, it derives your Wisdom-based skills (sans Listen for whatever reason), and Will-saves, off Intelligence instead of Wisdom.

This is incredible as you'll probably have 20+ Int really soon while your Wisdom is probably 10 or so. And all your level-up scores and items further boost Int meaning you'll probably gain +10 or so higher Int than Wis; this helps you with all your saves, and makes the last big group of skills (Wis-based ones) easy for you.

Other feats I find useful with the build:
- Practiced Spellcaster [Complete Arcane]: As you take levels in a non-Wizard class, this allows you to make up for the lost level in terms of caster level. Caster level is very important for dispelling, durations of your spells, some damage spells' damage and range, and counteracting opposing dispel effects. This increases your caster level (doesn't unlock higher levels of magic or give you more slots; just increases the level on which you can cast your spells) by +4, up to your character level. So, Rogue 1/Wizard 4 with this has Caster Level 5 (normally 4, from the Wizard levels). Likewise, Rogue 4/Wizard 1 with this would have Caster Level 5.

The big reason you want this is Unseen Seer; it has class feature called "Divination Spell Power". This improves your caster level for Divination-spells by 1 but reduces them for the others by 1 as well (up to +3/-3 by the end of the class). That's a bad thing. But with Practiced Spellcaster, well, it doesn't touch the +3 but when you'd get the -3 for non-Divination spells? Well, Rogue 1/Wizard 4/Unseen Seer 10 has Caster Level 14 normally. Non-Divination Spells would be cast on Caster Level 11. But lo and behold! Practiced Spellcaster sees that this is less than your level so it gives you +4. So thanks to it, you gain Caster Level 15, which is your character level anyways, for everything! Yay!

- Extend Spell [Player's Handbook]: This is useful with some buffs that last hours/level to make them last all day. Later on, it makes 10 min/level spells last ~8 hours so with 3 castings, you can make them last all day too.

- Persistent Spell [Complete Arcane]: This is a weird one. It has adjustment of +6 levels, to make a spell last for 24 hours instead of its normal duration. It's wonderful for you because there are certain low-level spells that only last 1 round, but have very useful bonuses for Sneak Attacking. All these are from Spell Compendium except for Hunter's Eye [Player's Handbook II]: Sniper's Shot (you can Sneak Attack at any range), Guided Shot (you ignore range penalties, less-than-total cover and less-than-total concealment), Arrow Mind (you don't provoke an Attack of Opportunity for shooting in melee), Golem Strike (you can sneak attack constructs), Vine Strike (you can sneak attack plants), Grave Strike (you can sneak attack undead), Hunter's Eye (you gain bonus Sneak Attack Dice = Caster Level/3 - so, Caster Level 9 means you'd gain +3d6 to your Sneak Attack and it gets better).

Having all those on at all times is incredible. Of course, it only works really late since you need level 7-8 slots to cast them as Persistent Spells but something to think about when you are looking at level 12-15. Oh, and some of those spells (Hunter's Eye, Vine Strike, Grave Strike) are not Wizard-spells, but Unseen Seer has class feature called "Advanced Learning" that allows him to learn a non-Wizard Divination 3 times. Hunter's Eye is a great choice; Vine Strike and Grave Strike are probably so situational that you'll just want a Wand of each. Oh, and Chain of Eyes [Spell Compendium]: Allows you to look through another creature's eyes. Wonderful with familiar or random creature as a scouting tool and a spotter for your longrange shots or spells.

- Craven [Champions of Ruin]: This would increase your Sneak Attack damage tremendously. It adds your character level to any Sneak Attack damage you deal. That's a lot. The drawback is that you suffer a penalty to saves against Fear.

That said, if you have Keen Intellect, your Will-save is thus that it shouldn't really be a problem. The fluff is annoying, but refluff it; you aren't a coward, you're just practical and thus efficient at killing silently but prefer to avoid direct confrontation with big beasts.

- Darkstalker [Lords of Madness]: This allows you to use Hide-skill to hide even from special senses like "Tremorsense", "Blindsight" and so on. I needn't explain how this can be useful for you.

- Obtain Familiar [Complete Arcane]: I traded my Familiar away for ability to teleport 10' as an immediate action (that is, out of turn order). This makes me very hard to pin down and kill. The thing is, familiar is extremely good for you. It can Aid Another you with all your skills (familiars have your skill ranks), it can use Wands in combat with Use Magic Device once you have enough ranks in that provided you have one that can talk (Ravens can) and it grants you a bonus.

Better yet, there's Improved Familiar (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#improvedFamiliar) which gets you wonderful servant with spell-likes, auxillary senses and so on. I personally was going to pick up a Pseudodragon (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/pseudodragon.htm) and train it "Mindsight" [Lords of Madness] so it could help me detect creatures in any conditions where my sights are not sufficient. There are also spells that improve a familiar's combat ability. As a summary, familiars are awesome.
Spells: There are some guides on Wizard spells like Playing a God (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=394.0) and Being Batman (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=104002) (though they don't directly apply to Rogue/Wizards) and it's too much material for me to cover here, so I'll say this: to deal Sneak Attack, Ray-spells are wonderful. Necromancy and Evocation have many decent options there, and Conjuration has possibly the best in "Orb of X"-line [Spell Compendium]; they penetrate Spell Resistance. Other than that...being Invisible is obviously useful, Charm Person/Monster might make even very reluctant people friendly and teleportation is great for getting to places you aren't supposed to be at, and avoiding melee combat and the like.

Then there's stuff like illusions and shapechanging magic which can do just about anything you want with enough creativity. And on low levels when your damage isn't all that high, you can end fights with Color Spray/Sleep/Glitterdust/Web/Grease. I'll mention "Divine Insight" [Spell Compendium] and Guidance of the Avatar (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a) as wonderful spells to consider for your Advanced Learning, by the way. Getting bonuses to skill checks on a skill monkey is insanely useful. Also, if you can gain Divine Power (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/divinePower.htm) somehow, you can wreak absolute havoc with a bow. You could get a Wand of it, for example. It's only DC 20 Use Magic Device to use. This all much later in your career, of course.
Variants: You can use Martial Wizard (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#wizard)-variant to trade your Scribe Scroll for some combat feat that would help you with your sneaky sniping, or Point Blank Shot if you want to enter Spellwarp Sniper (the class requires Point Blank Shot).

I used "Immediate Magic"-variant in Player's Handbook II to trade my familiar for ability to teleport instantaneously Int-times per day. Kept me unscathed most of the game. Requires conjuration specialization but on low levels, the bonus spells are wonderful anyways so I specialized; I banned Abjuration (and Necromancy) due to the number of spellcasters in the party covering the need for Dispels (it was an all-Wizard party).

If you have less, consider banning e.g. Evocation and Necromancy instead (use the Conjuration Orbs and company to deliver ranged sneak attacks and you'll be fine).

Now, of course, that's an explanation on my build. You don't need to copy or even know all of that; it's a lot of information if you are just starting off with the game, and the build is rather powerful, particularly later on. It is, however, there in case you're interested as I did end up writing all that. You'll do just fine with:

Gray Elf or Human
Rogue 1/Wizard 4/Unseen Seer 10
Int > Dex = Con > Cha > Wis = Strength
Able Learner, Keen Intellect, Nymph's Kiss, Practiced Spellcaster (you can do without any of these, but they'll hurt your skill monkeying; Able Learner is a borderline necessity as you'll be multiclassing while still wanting to cover Rogue's skill capabilities and your caster level will be hurting without Practiced Spellcaster).


Oh, and we used Character Flaw (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/characterFlaws.htm)-rules which allowed for two more 1st level feats (really, the game gives you so few feats it's a shame; I do suggest asking either for Flaws or bonus feats - latter is cleaner but if there are some interesting flaws you have in mind for your character, former works too), and Fractional Base Attack Bonuses (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sg/20060303a) to ensure that they are handled in a sane manner (that way, Rogue 1/Cleric 1/Druid 1/Bard 1 would have the +3 BAB he deserves; same as Rogue 4 or Cleric 4 or Druid 4 or Bard 4; instead of the +0 the rules would give him - basically fractionals just take all your Base Attack Bonus progressions and combine them into one progression). Both are very useful to the character.

onthetown
2010-06-24, 05:53 PM
I just wanted to point out that the Avenger PrC was an April Fool's joke, never intended for actual play.

I read that in the description, but WotC seems to have a strange sense of humour if that's really the case.

"It's April 1st, so we're going to take an existing class and take away its alignment restriction. HAHAHAHAHAHAH! WE'RE SO FUNNY!"

So I'm using it.

Tedesche
2010-06-24, 07:27 PM
Doesn't Unseen Seer reduce your caster level for all spells other than divinations? I would think that's not the best choice for a character that doesn't want to give up his magic prowess, particularly not if you want to sneak attack with rays and such.

Personally, I would play an elf (or any other race with Wizard as its favored class) go Rogue 1/Spellthief 1/Wizard 5/Spellwarp Sniper 5/Arcane Trickster FTW. Must-have feats are Point Blank Shot (prereq. for Spellwarp Sniper), and Master Spellthief (continues advancement of Steal Spell across all arcane caster levels). Sure, your BAB will be ****e, but that doesn't matter, because you'll be sneak attacking against touch AC. Sooooo juicy too, when Ray of Frost is suddenly useful for SA'ing 1d3+Xd6 cold damage. :-D Plus, with Spellwarp Sniper, you can prepare AoE damage spells in your 1-5th level spell slots in preparation for a horde fight, and convert them to rays if you require precision blasting instead.

Optimystik
2010-06-24, 07:29 PM
Doesn't Unseen Seer reduce your caster level for all spells other than divinations? I would think that's not the best choice for a character that doesn't want to give up his magic prowess, particularly not if you want to sneak attack with rays and such.

That's what Practiced Caster is for.

Wiz 4/Rogue 1/U.S. 10/SwS 5 is the standard ray-zapper build. 51d6 with each Disintegrate, plus you get 9th-level spells and have a CL of 20.

I would personally go with Xeph (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/xeph.htm) instead of Elf. You still get a Dex bonus, but no Con penalty... and they are psionic, which qualifies you for Psonic Shot. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#psionicShot)

Plus you can get really speedy - their Burst ability stacks with Expeditious Retreat/Haste, in case the guards find your sniper's nook etc. It also works on other forms of movement like flight.

Eldariel
2010-06-24, 07:53 PM
That's what Practiced Caster is for.

Wiz 4/Rogue 1/U.S. 10/SwS 5 is the standard ray-zapper build. 51d6 with each Disintegrate, plus you get 9th-level spells and have a CL of 20.

I would personally go with Xeph (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/monsters/xeph.htm) instead of Elf. You still get a Dex bonus, but no Con penalty... and they are psionic, which qualifies you for Psonic Shot. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#psionicShot)

I'd never give up Int-bonus for anything but a bonus feat at the very least in such a skill-heavy Int-SAD build; not only does it improve your Wizard-casting, it also improves you at all the Rogue-tasks and allows you to cover more ground in that sense.

Psionic Shot...I don't think you really have the feats for that. Something like Split Ray would add a lot more damage with one feat, for example. And with Hunter's Eye, you can be tossing around 62d6 Disintegrates...though I'd use something like Orb of Fire to avoid resistances and settle for 32d6 Twinned (or Repeated!) or so.

Tedesche
2010-06-24, 08:04 PM
That's what Practiced Caster is for.

Wiz 4/Rogue 1/U.S. 10/SwS 5 is the standard ray-zapper build. 51d6 with each Disintegrate, plus you get 9th-level spells and have a CL of 20.

Ah, gotcha. Although Practiced Spellcaster is only good for 4 levels, and if you continue the Unseen Seer progression into epic levels, your CL for divination spells will go through the roof while your others will lag behind, no? Unless THEN you went Arcane Trickster. :smallcool:

Optimystik
2010-06-24, 08:09 PM
Ah, gotcha. Although Practiced Spellcaster is only good for 4 levels, and if you continue the Unseen Seer progression into epic levels, your CL for divination spells will go through the roof while your others will lag behind, no? Unless THEN you went Arcane Trickster. :smallcool:

There's no reason to take US epic; AT gives faster sneak progression (5/10 vs. 4/10) and any divinations you really want when you use up your advanced learnings can be gotten via Limited Wish.

Practiced Caster will eliminate the -3 from Div. Spellpower, and the -1 from the Rogue dip, bringing you to CL20 at 20 before items.

Hell, once you get Guarded Mind (US 5) you can drop out of the class and go AT 5 instead, though that 3rd advanced learning is tasty.


I'd never give up Int-bonus for anything but a bonus feat at the very least in such a skill-heavy Int-SAD build; not only does it improve your Wizard-casting, it also improves you at all the Rogue-tasks and allows you to cover more ground in that sense.

Psionic Shot...I don't think you really have the feats for that. Something like Split Ray would add a lot more damage with one feat, for example. And with Hunter's Eye, you can be tossing around 62d6 Disintegrates...though I'd use something like Orb of Fire to avoid resistances and settle for 32d6 Twinned (or Repeated!) or so.

Depends on the level you play at. Split Ray is +2 metamagic, but Psionic Shot isn't metamagic at all. It can be used at first level with flaws.

1d3 + 2d6 with a cantrip (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/rayoffrost.htm) is nothing to sneeze at. (Well, you might sneeze because it's cold.)