How to play a beguiler

[Kaeso]

Hey there Playground,

Today I have a bit of a noob question. I'm running a private campaign for a friend of mine, his character is a Warblade 1 Firelord dwarf (planning to go Warblade1/Bard4/Warblade X with Song of the White Raven and Dragonfire Inspiration shenenigans). I have a DMPC that mostly serves to guide him (call him a plot device if you will) that's a beguiler. I'm mostly letting him take care of out of combat healing (through UMD and a wand of CLW) and I want to make him useful without stealing my friends characters thunder (which mostly consists of breaking faces and eventually enabling others to break faces). Hence my question: how do you play a beguiler? It has a few promising spells (glitterdust and haste), and with a lot of creativity you can make the image line useful, but besides those spells it hardly seems the beguiler has any useful combat spells. I know that the beguiler isn't about damage dealing, but even taking that into account it looks like most of his spells are fit for out of combat use. Can anybody explain to me how to play a beguiler (preferably in a way that helps the warblade break faces even better)?

EDIT: His stats are
STR 11
DEX 14
CON 14
INT 17
WIS 15
CHA 17

I might switch Wis and Cha around if I'll take arcane disciple, but I'm not too sure about it.

[Kaeso]

Second page and not a single response? Come on guys, I'm sure you have some tips :smallfrown:

[Geigan]

Have you looked at the Beguiler handbook? (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=2322.0)

[Mayhem]

I'm sure you're aware of colour spray shenanigans for the low levels. And you can use silent image to make a wall in front of your enemies to trap them next to the warblade. That kind of stuff.

[Lonely Tylenol]

If the spell versatility is what's getting you, you could progress with a Beguiler 5-6/Mindbender 0-1/Shadowcrafter 2/Shadowcraft Mage 5/Shadowcrafter 3-8/whatever. If that's too elaborate or doesn't fit the fluff, Arcane Disciple is GREAT, and Shadow Domain also gives you access to Shadow Conjuration/Evocation, which gives you access to the Evocation and Conjuration schools. That should free up your options a bit.

Failing that, perhaps the Beguiler's existing limitations are your answer: since the Beguiler doesn't really have many offensive or blaster options, you are left with battlefield control (Color Spray softens up targets for your Warblade) and buffs (Haste makes your Warblade considerably more fearsome, especially because you should get it about the same time he gets his second iterative attack, though I understand the multi-classing stymies that). Congratulations! You won't show up the Bardblade in battle, but you'll still have useful combat abilities that augment his.

[Kaeso]

Thanks for the replies and good suggestions, guys.

I guess I should look over their spell list again. I just had/have the feeling that most of their spells are more usable out of combat than in.

Arcane disciple would be a good choice, as Tylenol suggested (which means I should probably switch my cha and wis scores around), but is it still limited to the one casting per day clause, or does the way beguilers cast their spells overrule that?

[Lonely Tylenol]

Arcane disciple would be a good choice, as Tylenol suggested (which means I should probably switch my cha and wis scores around), but is it still limited to the one casting per day clause, or does the way beguilers cast their spells overrule that?

I believe it's limited to one casting per day, as it explicitly says castings if the spell is not normally prepared, so you can't go balls-to-the-wall with only the spells you gain from Arcane Disciple (essentially, they treat one spell slot of each level like a Domain spell slot).

Still, it allows you to reach out of the Illusion/Enchantment schools a bit, which is great, because Beguilers only have a handful of spells that aren't drawn from these two (admittedly small) schools of magic (and while these ones are gems, such as Mage Armor and Haste, they're still not a full spell list).

[dextercorvia]

It's 1/day, unless you can figure out a specific way around it.

[visigani]

Thanks for the replies and good suggestions, guys.

I guess I should look over their spell list again. I just had/have the feeling that most of their spells are more usable out of combat than in.

Arcane disciple would be a good choice, as Tylenol suggested (which means I should probably switch my cha and wis scores around), but is it still limited to the one casting per day clause, or does the way beguilers cast their spells overrule that?



Homes, you couldn't be more wrong about the Beguiler spell list.


You're looking at it from a straight "d6" perspective. Consider the offensive benefits of "Hold Person". Now every single strike you make against that target is a crit.

Consider casting "Greater Invisibility" on your buddies PC.

Again, these seem like "defensive" options but they dramatically increase his likelihood to hit targets (who lose their dex bonus to AC as well as the natural +2 bonus to hit invisibility gives).

And I haven't even touched on the horrors you can unleash with mass suggestion, dominate monster, and time stop.