help me cap off my wizard build

[morkendi]

Playing a whisper gnome diviner. I like to build a template to follow as I lvl. Rite now I went 6 diviner, 1 shadowcraft mage. DM said no to shadow adept as he plays all magic and psionics transparent. No bonus for shadow weave magic vs regular weave, so not worth it. Working through ideas, i came up with diviner 6/ shadowcraft mage 5/ shadowcrafter 8. After 8 shadowcrafter, you get no more bonus to shadow conjeration or evocation. I have the last 2 lvls to fill. Thought archmage maybe?

Side note, at 7th lvl I have 23 int right now from build and i got aged from some magic deck. Age didn't hurt me, but i drew the card. Second card, I drew gave me a wish. Keeping it simple, i wished for double known spells. So I double what normal wizard gets, then add my bonus spells from stats. This would give me slots to sacrifice for archmage abilities.

[Eiko]

Archmage is difficult to qualify for simply by eating feats you may have been using elsewhere. My first question is that is the character already in play or is it one you are still building. If it is the latter I would suggest you take only 3 levels in Wizard before transitioning to Master specialist from Complete Mage.

As well as a few minor bonuses in the three levels you could take it will also give you greater spell focus and I believe skill focus. It gives you several of the requirements for archmage whilst its only requirements are things you would be picking up anyway.

Archmage makes a nice cap to most arcane casters, simply because the majority of prestige classes are not front loaded enough for two levels to matter (save mindbender or similar), where archmage gives a powerful ability each level.

Feat wise if you're not set already you might like Spell mastery into Signature spell (Silent Image) so that you'll be able to spontaneously convert your prepared spells into silent image for close to free spontaneous casting on a wizard chasis.

[morkendi]

I am 7 lvls in to play. I have 2 flaws wich allows a total of 10 feats. On paper, i have collegiate wiz, inproved initiative, spell focus illusion, eschew components, spell mastery, spell mastery ( dm likes to separate us from our stuff some times) highten spell, greater spell focus illusion, skill focus spellcraft, spell focus conjuration. This gives me everything to meet prerequisites for listed classes and the 2 levels archmage. I have +50% to shadow evocation and conjuration. Highten spell lets me fake up to 8th lvl spells with silent image. A silent imaged fireball would be 80% real. Delayed blast, 120% real and so on.

My dropped school is evocation. How does highten effect a signature spell if i drop a spell mastery to get it?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The key to Shadowcraft Mage is having Heighten Spell and Signature Spell: Silent Image. At Shadowcraft Mage 3 your Silent Image can be used to emulate spells similar to a Shadow Conjuration/Evocation. With those two feats you can swap any prepared spell for a Heightened Silent Image of the prepared spell's level, and use it to emulate an Evocation or Conjuration of one level lower than the prepared spell's slot. Throw on Earth Spell (RoS) and you get to emulate a spell of the prepared spell's level instead, and you also get a fairly significant caster level bonus. With a metamagic reducer like Practical Metamagic (RotD) it gets even more efficient, you can qualify for that by using Stonehunter Gnome in Dragon Magic or taking the feat Dragontouched.

Ideally you should have gone with an Illusionist instead of a Diviner, used these Illusionist ACFs (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/specialistWizardVariants.htm#illusionistVariants), and taken Master Specialist 4 for +2 DC to nearly every spell you cast, including those emulated via Shadow Illusions. You can't even go Wizard 6/ Shadowcraft Mage without early qualification shenanigans, since you need to hit Wizard 7 casting to meet its 4th level spell prerequisite, so Illusionist 3/ Master Specialist 4 is ideal. In that case, eight levels of Shadowcrafter right after Shadowcraft Mage gets you to 20th. With the Gnome Illusionist 1 substitution level you get Silent Image as a 0-level spell, which means another +1 caster level from Earth Spell. Take Residual Magic (CM) and every other Silent Image you cast is Heightened for free, without taking a higher level spell slot.

See if you can use the retraining rules in PH2 to switch a few things around.

[Acanous]

Retraining may be allowed, you might wish to see about that.
It's interesting that you specialized in Divination, then took Illusionist PrC's. What's up with that?

[morkendi]

I did diviner just cause i wanted to try it. We started at lvl 1 on a spur of the moment thing after some deaths in party in previous game. Wanted to do strait batman wizard. When looking at prestige classes, I saw I could qualify easy.

[morkendi]

I was going to do the seven fold veil, but I think I like the flavor of the shadowcraft mage better. I may forget the archmage and compleat shadowcraft to get native outsider to use with polymorph. Plus, being diviner doesn't seem to hurt at all, and i only lost evocation wixh I don't need.