[3.5] Cerebremancer cheese

[Rejusu]

So I've been toying around looking over the Cerebremancer as a friend is considering playing one in our next campaign. Now it seems reasonably balanced if you take the "legitimate" route into it of Psion 3/Wizard 3 and start levelling Cerebremancer from CL7 onwards. You'll be behind in spell levels but you have greater casting stamina and more versatility. However if you take the early entry route of Wizard 1 with Precocious Apprentice, Ardent 2 with Practised Manifester you can start levelling Cerebremancer as early as CL4. By CL3 you've fulfilled all the prerequisites, PM and PA give you 2nd level powers and spells respectively and by CL3 you have a skill cap of 6 for the Knowledge requirements.

Now doing it this way does have some disadvantages. The Ardent has a much more limited power list than the Psion and doesn't get things like Schism (you can grab an Expanded knowledge feat for this though), you're limited to the three mantles your two levels give and have to use feats to gain more (tap mantle). But the advantage is that you only lose two caster levels as opposed to the three you would with the Psion build and most importantly because of poor editing in CP the level of powers you know as an Ardent is purely dependant on your Manifester level.

All in all this means that by the time you finish Cerebremancer you're manifesting as a 13th level Ardent and casting as an 11th level wizard! All at character level 13! What's more is after you're done with Cerebremancer Practised manifester will keep your ML scaling with your CL all the way up to CL 16 (ML 16) which means you only need only one more level in ardent to gain access to 9th level powers. Similarly your remaining 6 character levels can be used to bring your caster level up to 17 giving you access to 9th level spells.

The good:
- Access to BOTH 9th level powers and 9th level spells by CL20
- Casting stamina, with a number of spells per day and a power point pool you should never go dry.
- Almost equal progression in two classes, it's nearly gestalt like.
- Only lose two levels of wizard progression as opposed to three.

The bad:
- Sort of MAD, for the Ardent/Wizard route you need both a high wisdom and int score (19 in both for 9th level stuff), where as the Psion/Wizard can get away with just int.
- Limited power list due to only having three psionic mantles and missing certain useful powers from the Psion list (Schism).
- While your effective Ardent level can keep up with your character level this isn't true of your wizard level. You'll always be two levels behind in terms of spell level and spells per day.
- Relies on shaky interpretation of Ardent progression rules.
- No bonus feats means feat starvation. Also unless abuse of magic mantles explicit transparency is allowed you have to choose between metamagic and metapsionic feats.
- You still get 9th level stuff pretty late. And short of having lots of int you'll only ever have one 9th level spell per day. Worst of all though is that short of gaining them through feats you'll only ever know a SINGLE 9th level power if my interpretation is correct. As practised manifester doesn't increase your powers known the only way you'll learn a new power is by taking more levels in Ardent (or a PrC that stacks with it) and since you can only afford to take one level and only learn one new power a level...

So does anyone have any thoughts on this? Despite the slower wizard progression it looks like it's pretty awesome. I'm thinking of recommending it to my friend, though we'll have to see if the Ardents progression trick will fly with the DM first. Otherwise I think I'd recommend he go Wizard 1 with PA/Psion 3 then take Cerebremancer from CL 5.

[Psyren]

This does work. However, there are two large cons I didn't see on your list:

-You gut your powers known progression (i.e. for an Ardent to hop around and learn 9ths, you're sacrificing powers either in the middle or at the beginning.)
-You gut your power points progression. (i.e. you may have ML 17, but you have the base PP of an Ardent 13 or 14 - a loss of 80-100 PP.)
Combined with your MAD (which hurts your bonus PP as well) and you end up with comparatively little ammunition - potentially on both sides. This is in stark contrast to your "casting stamina" point.



Keep in mind also that 9th-level powers are not as vital a target to shoot for as 9th-level spells. A lot of your really good spells are lower-level (e.g. Time Stop is 6th for psions, Mind Blank is 7th, Mental Pinnacle is 6th, Dominate Monster is 4th, Schism is 4th, Synchronicity is 1st etc.) So while most other theurges have "get to dual 9s" as an unspoken goal, that doesn't apply quite as much to psionic theurges.

A better option may be a Krau Illumian Cleric, which will allow you early entry with a wisdom-based caster, combined with Psychic Theurge (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040925b) instead of Cerebremancer. This will keep you SAD, helping greatly with the ammunition problem.

As far as Schism, there is an ACF for Ardents in Mind's Eye (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) that lets you customize their mantles by theme. A mantle like Mental Power or Communication could feasibly get you Schism without needing a feat.

[Rejusu]

This does work. However, there are two large cons I didn't see on your list:

-You gut your powers known progression (i.e. for an Ardent to hop around and learn 9ths, you're sacrificing powers either in the middle or at the beginning.)

Not quite sure what you're saying here. For this build your powers known progression would begin at CL2 and continue all the way to CL13. Ardent from CL2-3 and then Cerebremancer from CL4-13. Since Cerebremancer states:

He gains additional power points per day and access to new powers as if he had also gained a level in any one manifesting class he belonged to previously.

This means your known powers would progress fine from beginning through to middle. It's after that where it becomes problematic as you wouldn't really have any way to learn new powers besides from feats and so you'll probably only have one 7th level power and no 8th level powers without taking feats for them. You wouldn't really need to hop around to learn a 9th level power though. Because practised manifester will take you all the way to ML 16 (as it's +4, and you have 10 levels from Cere and 2 levels from Ardent) you only need a one level dip to get ML 17 and by extension gain the ability to manifest 9th level powers. Even if you only know one of them.


-You gut your power points progression. (i.e. you may have ML 17, but you have the base PP of an Ardent 13 or 14 - a loss of 80-100 PP.)
Combined with your MAD (which hurts your bonus PP as well) and you end up with comparatively little ammunition - potentially on both sides. This is in stark contrast to your "casting stamina" point.

Well the casting stamina is more prominent early game, as by character level 10 you'd have the same power points as a 9th level Ardent and the spells per day of an 8th level wizard. Later on it'd drop off as you noted due to the loss of PP progression and the reduced wizard progression. Even then though I can't see it falling behind another caster in terms of ammunition, even if it may lose the advantage. Though really it'd depend on how well you could boost your ability scores for the bonus spells and PP.


Keep in mind also that 9th-level powers are not as vital a target to shoot for as 9th-level spells. A lot of your really good spells are lower-level (e.g. Time Stop is 6th for psions, Mind Blank is 7th, Mental Pinnacle is 6th, Dominate Monster is 4th, Schism is 4th, Synchronicity is 1st etc.) So while most other theurges have "get to dual 9s" as an unspoken goal, that doesn't apply quite as much to psionic theurges.

This is true. Ideally the build would sacrifice ML for CL rather than the other way around, but sadly there's no precocious initiate feat that'd allow for the same kind of early access. This is really a compromise to sacrifice as little CL as possible for entry into Cerebremancer.


A better option may be a Krau Illumian Cleric, which will allow you early entry with a wisdom-based caster, combined with Psychic Theurge (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040925b) instead of Cerebremancer. This will keep you SAD, helping greatly with the ammunition problem.

As far as Schism, there is an ACF for Ardents in Mind's Eye (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) that lets you customize their mantles by theme. A mantle like Mental Power or Communication could feasibly get you Schism without needing a feat.

True, but then you lose arcane casting for divine. And I think my friend is probably set on arcane casting. Then again he may not go for this at all. It just caught my eye and I was interested in what could be done with it.

[Psyren]

Not quite sure what you're saying here.

I'm saying that, while you can end up with 9ths, you finish with 7 less powers known than an Ardent 20. It's not crippling by any means, but it's something to keep in mind.

It's not a bad build - I was mainly pointing out that you left those two items off your "cons" list.

[Necroticplague]

If you want, you can buy the spellcasting with feats. Initiate of Magic (I think, name might be wrong, basically you get to cast 3 1st level spells once per day)+Eldritch corruption=3 3rd level spells (higher if you have someone to deal with more CON damage). This would allow you to not have to give up any manifesting.

[Rejusu]

I'm saying that, while you can end up with 9ths, you finish with 7 less powers known than an Ardent 20. It's not crippling by any means, but it's something to keep in mind.

It's not a bad build - I was mainly pointing out that you left those two items off your "cons" list.

Actually I was just confused by you saying that the sacrifice in powers known was in the beginning or the middle, when really most of the sacrifice is from the late middle to the end.

Either way it seems like it'd be a fun build but there's always the risk it'll end up less powerful than a straight up arcane caster due the reduced casting progression. Then again so far he's going to be the parties only real blasty caster so I don't think he has to worry about competition. So far we have a changeling factotum, my half-giant psychic warrior, some kind of cleric (something of Pelor I think), and potentially a dread necromancer.

It's probably also worth noting that there's another early entry method for Cerebremancer that like Psion/Wizard is SAD. You can do Sorc 1 with PA and then Wilder 4 as both of them are Charisma based. This allows you to take your first Cerebremancer class level at character level 6 as opposed to 7 if you went the Psi/Wiz route. Of course this has the same disadvantage as Psi/Wiz in that you're locked out of higher level spells/powers.


If you want, you can buy the spellcasting with feats. Initiate of Magic (I think, name might be wrong, basically you get to cast 3 1st level spells once per day)+Eldritch corruption=3 3rd level spells (higher if you have someone to deal with more CON damage). This would allow you to not have to give up any manifesting.

That'd fulfil the entry requirements into Cerebremancer yes... but without any arcane caster class levels what'd be the point of taking Cerebremancer? You'd lose half it's benefit.

[erikun]

Just a couple of notes:

First, your Wizard/Ardent will end up with one 7th-level power, zero 8th-level powers, and one 9th-level power. So while it would have 9th-level "powers", it actually only has a single power above 7th level (and only two above 6th).

Second, the character is still losing 3 spellcaster levels, meaning no access to 9th-level spellcasting until 20th level. This may look good on paper, but unless you're planning on running a good portion of your game at 20th level or higher, what it ends up meaning is the character never accessing 9th-level spells.

[Rebel7284]

Psion 5/Shadow Templar 2/Cerebremancer 8/xx 5

When using dual progression PrCs, always go with fast progression. :D

[Rejusu]

Just a couple of notes:

First, your Wizard/Ardent will end up with one 7th-level power, zero 8th-level powers, and one 9th-level power. So while it would have 9th-level "powers", it actually only has a single power above 7th level (and only two above 6th).

True, though you can spend feats (e.g. Expanded Knowledge) to gain 8th and 9th level powers. But yes the lack of high level powers is a disadvantage. Still as Psyren noted a lot of the good Psionic powers are 6th level or lower so you're not too disadvantaged in this regard.


Second, the character is still losing 3 spellcaster levels, meaning no access to 9th-level spellcasting until 20th level. This may look good on paper, but unless you're planning on running a good portion of your game at 20th level or higher, what it ends up meaning is the character never accessing 9th-level spells.

Conversely if the game doesn't go much further than 10-15th level this isn't much of an issue. I mean since I have no idea how far this game will go it's probably not worth getting bogged down in whether it'll get 9th level spells or not, just that it has the potential to access them by ECL20. Also it depends on when you take the last level dip into Ardent when you get 9th level spells. It's not worth taking until ECL 17 at the earliest as that's when your additional ML's from PM run out. Take it before that and you won't be able to use your power learned for that level for a 9th level power. You could just wait and not take it until ECL 20 though, which would give you 9th level spells at ECL 19 and then 9th level powers at ECL 20.

[Suddo]

Erudite Spell to Power variant (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) 3 / Wizard 1 should do something interesting. Though Erudite StP is kind of iffy.

[Rejusu]

Erudite Spell to Power variant (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) 3 / Wizard 1 should do something interesting. Though Erudite StP is kind of iffy.

Well in all fairness the interpretation of the Ardents manifesting ability being based on manifester level as opposed to class level is also quite iffy. The spell to power variant is kind of underwhelming too. To add a spell you have to succeed on two DC 15 + spell level skill checks (spellcraft and psicraft) and if you fail you can't attempt to learn it again until you level. You then have to meditate for 8 hours and pay an XP cost (20*Erudite level) to permanently learn it, and if you're interrupted during this you can't attempt to learn it again until you gain another level. Plus you can only learn spells one level lower than the maximum level power you can manifest.

[Cor1]

If it's supposed to be cheesy, look into the early-entry feats :

Versatile Spellcaster : You need to be able to cast spells spontaneously. (There are ways for Wizards to do this, too.) It gives you the ability to spend two slots of your highest-level spells, to cast one spell you know of one level higher than your maximum.

Precocious Apprentice, take it at 1st level, and you know can cast one 2nd-level Arcane spell. It's strictly worse than Versatile Spellcaster.

Practiced Spellcaster/Manifester : each of those apply to one manifesting or spellcasting class, and give you +4 Caster/Manifester Level, up to your HD.

Expensive feat tax, but you can do, say, Warmage 1 / Wilder 3 / Cerebremancer and then Mind Mage or something for maximum cheese. SAD (Cha), and 9th-level spells and powers eventually.

I haven't explored that possibility myself, but I remember Mind Mage enables crazy CL/ML shenanigans.

[Psyren]

The thing is, I'm not sure what the 9th-level power is getting you. Ardents get two good ones as-written - Metafaculty and True Creation. The others either stink (Apopsi) or require weak mantles (e.g. Tornado Blast is attached to the weaksauce Elements mantle.) And while the good powers have the portential to be truly excellent, their usefulness is still a bit campaign-dependent. Is it really worth an entire career being MAD?

I honestly think you'd be better off as a Wiz 3/Psion 3 without any early entry at all. I know it's crazy by conventional theurge-logic, but hear me out:

- The slower power access isn't as big a deal as it seems: recall that augmentation, not max power level, is the true source of a psion's power. For example, if you start with Psion 3 and then grab Practiced Manifester before entering Wizard, you can still fire energy rays and summon Astral Constructs as though you were a Psion 6. You can lean on this side of your build for firepower while your wizard side is picking up speed.

- You get a whopping 11 more powers known from the largest power list in the game - and some of them will even be discipline powers, freeing up feats you would have had to blow on Expanded Knowledge.

- Your build instantly loses any and all "cheesy" feeling: You're entering Cerebremancer exactly as WotC intended. No DM under the sun could have a problem with that.

- You become Int-SAD: This is the big advantage, because now you can toss Wis to the curb completely and you'll get a lot more ammunition from your ability score modifier. You can put all your stat bumps into Int, buy +Int items before anything else, and put your leftover wealth into things like ioun stones, dorjes, Skin of Proteus/+Con/+Dex items and animated shields instead of the +Wis items you'd have needed.

At the end of Cerebremancer, you focus on Wizard (achieving Wizard 17 for 9ths there) and reform your psion side into support powers - things like Schism, Temporal Acceleration, Twinned Synchronicity etc. And if you need to cut loose on your psion side, you've got spells like Mental Pinnacle and Dweomer of Transference to beef up your mental powers.

[Rejusu]

If it's supposed to be cheesy, look into the early-entry feats :

Versatile Spellcaster : You need to be able to cast spells spontaneously. (There are ways for Wizards to do this, too.) It gives you the ability to spend two slots of your highest-level spells, to cast one spell you know of one level higher than your maximum.

Precocious Apprentice, take it at 1st level, and you know can cast one 2nd-level Arcane spell. It's strictly worse than Versatile Spellcaster.

Practiced Spellcaster/Manifester : each of those apply to one manifesting or spellcasting class, and give you +4 Caster/Manifester Level, up to your HD.

Expensive feat tax, but you can do, say, Warmage 1 / Wilder 3 / Cerebremancer and then Mind Mage or something for maximum cheese. SAD (Cha), and 9th-level spells and powers eventually.

I haven't explored that possibility myself, but I remember Mind Mage enables crazy CL/ML shenanigans.

I don't think versatile spellcaster would work for entry into cerebremancer.


You can use two spell slots of the same level to cast a spell you know that is one level higher.

Emphasis mine. Since you only know spells you can cast, you can't use versatile spellcaster to qualify for Cerebremancer. A warmage in particular only knows spells of a higher level when they gain access to that level. Thus warmage/wilder wouldn't work unless you took Precocious Apprentice. PA may not be very useful later on but it's not worse than VS because it's the only way (that I know of) to fulfil the Cerebremancer 2nd level arcane casting prerequisite with only one arcane caster class level.

Thing is even if you could use VS to qualify I'm not sure it'd be worth it over PA. You either have to have spontaneous casting naturally, which means you give up the Wizards superior spell progression, or you potentially have to drop two feats on it instead of one to give your prepared spellcaster spontaneous casting ability or use some other method to get it. I mean PA may not have much long term use but a single feat to gain early entry on the arcane side plus an extra second level spell slot and +2 to spellcraft isn't that bad.

Also with that build I don't think there's any way to get 9th level spells until after 20th level. I'm not clear on how the Mind Mage works (plus it being Dragon Magazine and written for 3.0 Psionics it's likely to not be allowed in most games) but unless it offers accelerated arcane caster progression you'll be capped at 8th level spells at level 20. With sorcerer progression (which is what the warmage uses) you don't get 9th level spells until class level 18. With 1 level in warmage, 3 levels in wilder then 10 levels in Cerebremancer you'll have 11 class levels in warmage at character level 14. This means that even if you sink your last 6 levels into something with full arcane casting progression you'll still only end up with the casting ability of a 17th level warmage.

Really there's no way to avoid losing caster/manifester levels with Cerebremancer but you can minimise how many levels you lose. For example with the Ardent/Wizard build listed you only lose two caster levels because you can qualify for entry into Cerebremancer by character level 3 (as opposed to CL4 with the Warmage/Wilder build). This is based on the poor wording on Ardent which basically means your manifesting ability is actually capped by your manifester level as opposed to your class level.

At character level 14 a Wilder/Warmage Cerebremancer could only manifest 6th level powers and cast 5th level spells. By comparison an Ardent/Wizard Cerebremancer of the same character level could also manifest 6th level powers but also be able to cast 6th level spells at the cost of being more MAD (Wis/Int). By comparison the "legitimate" entry route into Cerebremancer of 3 Psion/3 Wizard would at the same character level would have the same manifesting/casting ability but with a few key differences:

- No early entry, which means slow spell/power progression in the early game.

- With Ardent/Wizard at CL 14 you're manifesting as if you were a 14th level Ardent and casting as if you were a 12th level Wizard as opposed to an 11th level Psion/Wizard.

- Most importantly of all with the Ardent/Wiz build you don't have to pick between 9th level powers or 9th level spells. Unless your DM allows the Mind Mage once you've maxed out Cere you have to make a choice to progress with manifesting or Casting for your remaining class levels. Since you max out Cere at character level 16 with the Psi/Wiz build you end up with the casting/manifesting ability of a 13th level Wiz/Psion. This means that to get to class level 17 (9th level spells/powers) you have to invest all your remaining class levels in one or the other or split them and don't gain 9th level anything.

However because with the Ardent/Wizard build you're a caster level ahead. In addition with the cap on Ardent manifesting being based on ML this means that due to practised manifester your ML continues progressing past when you max out Cerebremancer at char level 14 all the way to char level 16. What this means is you can split your remaining 6 character levels between wizard and ardent (or equivalent classes) with 5 in the former and 1 in the latter. This gives you a caster level and manifester level of 17 at character level 20. You can even throw practised spellcaster in there so your caster level is 20 (though you'll still have the casting ability of a 17th level Wizard).



The thing is, I'm not sure what the 9th-level power is getting you. Ardents get two good ones as-written - Metafaculty and True Creation. The others either stink (Apopsi) or require weak mantles (e.g. Tornado Blast is attached to the weaksauce Elements mantle.) And while the good powers have the portential to be truly excellent, their usefulness is still a bit campaign-dependent. Is it really worth an entire career being MAD?

I honestly think you'd be better off as a Wiz 3/Psion 3 without any early entry at all. I know it's crazy by conventional theurge-logic, but hear me out:

- The slower power access isn't as big a deal as it seems: recall that augmentation, not max power level, is the true source of a psion's power. For example, if you start with Psion 3 and then grab Practiced Manifester before entering Wizard, you can still fire energy rays and summon Astral Constructs as though you were a Psion 6. You can lean on this side of your build for firepower while your wizard side is picking up speed.

- You get a whopping 11 more powers known from the largest power list in the game - and some of them will even be discipline powers, freeing up feats you would have had to blow on Expanded Knowledge.

- Your build instantly loses any and all "cheesy" feeling: You're entering Cerebremancer exactly as WotC intended. No DM under the sun could have a problem with that.

- You become Int-SAD: This is the big advantage, because now you can toss Wis to the curb completely and you'll get a lot more ammunition from your ability score modifier. You can put all your stat bumps into Int, buy +Int items before anything else, and put your leftover wealth into things like ioun stones, dorjes, Skin of Proteus/+Con/+Dex items and animated shields instead of the +Wis items you'd have needed.

At the end of Cerebremancer, you focus on Wizard (achieving Wizard 17 for 9ths there) and reform your psion side into support powers - things like Schism, Temporal Acceleration, Twinned Synchronicity etc. And if you need to cut loose on your psion side, you've got spells like Mental Pinnacle and Dweomer of Transference to beef up your mental powers.

Good points. One of the disadvantages of the lack of early entry is slow power progression. I hadn't considered though that practised manifester could make up for that through augmentation. I guess whether 9th level powers would be worth it is dependent on whether the power substitution rules for mantles are allowed or not. I'd forgotten that Expanded knowledge can't get you additional 9th level powers, however it can get you 8th level powers (Psion/Wiz would be capped at 7th level) so those should probably be factored in.

I sold my friend on this the other night but I think I'll explain to him the advantages of going the standard build and see what he thinks. It's really just a shame there's no Wisdom based arcane classes (or fuzzily written int based psionics) with wizard spell progression as that'd really make this build shine.

Then again I'm thinking of directing him towards Beguiler/Wizard/Illumian Ultimate Magus now.