help me figure out these builds..... please

[pyromanser244]

okay so last night my character died early in or game on a failed balance check. :smallsigh:
this left me with a lot of time to do all of nothing, so to combat my boredom (and drown out some of the sillier things people were surviving at the table :smallannoyed:) I started flipping through the complete books we had. and there I ran into some things that gave me IDEAS :smallamused:. and now I can't get these ideas out of my head. so to put them down somewhere I'm going to lay them out here. please comment, make suggestions, and even offer (constructive) criticisms of these builds.

first there is the suel archanamach. I've always liked this PrC, even before I knew how good some of the spells it gets are. and it only takes 6 to 7 levels in a fighter equivalent class (full BAB or close) to get into the class. skills are tricky but it'll take no more than 7 levels of anything to get them all assuming a positive int score. now the spells for the archanamach are cha based so I'd like the build to have a decent to good cha score, which leads to the major question which has been bugging me; how do I best use cha as a fighter type? my stats are spread kinda thin so I may not be able to keep intimidate up for fear stacking. the next best thing (that I've thought of so far) is going paladin for lay on hands and divine grace. thing is I've toyed with builds to abuse divine grace before and here it could actually work nicely.

the build I've worked out so far is paladin 2/ fighter 1/ rogue 3/ pious templar 1.
this gives me evasion and mettle on top of divine grace for silly good saves. the level in fighter is there so that you get the 4 feats needed to make this work in the space provided. a human or any other race with a bonus feat can skip the fighter and get those nice paladin immunities. I'm listing this however because drow get SR and the point of this build is to make casters cry.:smallbiggrin:

as much as I like this build, I know I haven't thought of everything that I could use. just in writing this it hit me to use warlock 4/ fighter type 3 as a base. a lot of good SLAs at will....maybe frightful blast + barbarian rage....
SMACK
but I digress......yes..no, no......YES. MUST FOCUS.......
the other end to this is those last few levels. I'll have 3 to 4 levels at the end of this progression that I'm not sure about. thus far I've considered;
master transmogrifist: I see no reason not to take alter self and polymorgh and anything that makes them better...
divine crusader: not really the best option, unless I find a really, really good domain or go epic.
master of the unseen hand: perhaps my favorite right now, I get telekinesis as 1 of my last spells and this can improve that use without loosing caster levels.


the other thing that has been bouncing around in my head is the geomancer.
please settle down, I know it's a trap. but I'm not trying to build a really powerful character, so much as build a character that is actually good at something most never get to do. the idea I'm going for is casting all of my arcane spells while in medium to heavy armor. and depending on how touch spells work with natural attacks I could have some really funny combos for this build.

the basic Idea is wizard 1/ cleric 3 while taking precocious apprentice to get the second level arcane prerequisite. I think that would work (don't have the feat in front of me). I may be able to get better classes for this but I like the 4 level progression so if other work with this great. this way I'd get into geomancer at level 5 and choose to up arcane at every level of geomancer I take. and I'm not sure what races would be good for something like this either.
after that I'd have 6 levels in which to multiclass and pick up some more umph for the spells. since the build still lets me choose spells normally I could get into pretty much any arcane PrC I'd want.



so that's my long-winded building rant. any thoughts? things I might have missed or gotten wrong?

note: I am well aware that god wizard, or clericzilla, or druidzilla could all beat the stuffing out of these builds. the guys I play with rarely get to that level of op so I'm fine with not being perfectly optimized.

[herrhauptmann]

Suel Arcanamach is a fun idea. There's better cha-gish builds out there (sorcadin), and others that are simpler to get use (duskblade), but it's fun. I also like the idea that fighters can get access to ancient secret magics too. Secrets that a wizard can't make use of.

If you wanna get crazy, and have a lenient DM, you can try a Sublime Arcanamach. Uses sublime chord to get 9th level spells. In the end, even with the DM allowign things like Harmonius Knight, it ends up as a lesser version of the sorcadin.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=217687

[Flickerdart]

Being a Divine Crusader that only casts from one domain is for chumps. Jump into Prestige Paladin/Ranger, Contemplative, Sovereign Speaker... Fighter 4/Crusader 1/Soldier of Light 2 is a good entry.

[Kuulvheysoon]

first there is the suel archanamach. I've always liked this PrC, even before I knew how good some of the spells it gets are. and it only takes 6 to 7 levels in a fighter equivalent class (full BAB or close) to get into the class. skills are tricky but it'll take no more than 7 levels of anything to get them all assuming a positive int score. now the spells for the archanamach are cha based so I'd like the build to have a decent to good cha score, which leads to the major question which has been bugging me; how do I best use cha as a fighter type? my stats are spread kinda thin so I may not be able to keep intimidate up for fear stacking. the next best thing (that I've thought of so far) is going paladin for lay on hands and divine grace. thing is I've toyed with builds to abuse divine grace before and here it could actually work nicely.

the build I've worked out so far is paladin 2/ fighter 1/ rogue 3/ pious templar 1.
this gives me evasion and mettle on top of divine grace for silly good saves. the level in fighter is there so that you get the 4 feats needed to make this work in the space provided. a human or any other race with a bonus feat can skip the fighter and get those nice paladin immunities. I'm listing this however because drow get SR and the point of this build is to make casters cry.:smallbiggrin:

You're asking for alternate suggestions?

Hexblade (Complete Warrior) gets 3 of the 4 prerequisite skills for Suel Arcanamach as class skills (Skilled City Dweller Cityscape web enhancement, trading Ride for Tumble), as well as Arcane Resistance (Cha to saves against spells and SLAs) and Mettle by third level. Since Rogue gets Jump as a class skill, something like Hexblade 3/Rogue 2/Full BAB 2 gets in quite easily.

Hells, Hexblade 5/Rogue 2 qualifies, and even gets a bonus feat (via Hexblade) from a list that includes Combat Casting. Picking up the Dark Companion Alternate Class Feature at 4th level (from the Player's Handbook 2) can give you a floating curse to give your opponents a -2 penalty to AC and saves.

[Keld Denar]

My favorite Suel entry is Paladin4/Duskblade2. That gives you easy access to all of the shells you need, free Combat Casting feat, Divine Grace, and most importantly, Turn Undead. Not useful for actually fighting undead, but there are dozens of feats and abilities powered by TU attempts. The simplest ideas are Law Devotion and Divine Might, but if you wanna get real fancy, you could go with NaenHoon Illumian for your race and use them to Persist 2 spells per day. Suel casting gets some good persistable spells like Wraithstrike and Blinking or Greater Mirror Image or Greater Invisibility.

Plus, you can take Versatile Spellcaster and convert your plethora of 1st level Duskblade spells into 2nd level Suel spells. Not bad.

[pyromanser244]

You're asking for alternate suggestions?


pretty much yeah. there are a lot of books that I either don't have, haven't read yet or aren't familiar with. so there is a lot of classes, variants and features I don't know about that could give me interesting options.

for example, while I am familiar with hexblade, I have no Idea what the variant you mentioned does (though I can look it up) and don't have access to the enhancement you mentioned.


also while cha to saves is good if there is some other way to use the stat in another class or by feats I'd like to hear about it.

[Kuulvheysoon]

pretty much yeah. there are a lot of books that I either don't have, haven't read yet or aren't familiar with. so there is a lot of classes, variants and features I don't know about that could give me interesting options.

for example, while I am familiar with hexblade, I have no Idea what the variant you mentioned does (though I can look it up) and don't have access to the enhancement you mentioned.


also while cha to saves is good if there is some other way to use the stat in another class or by feats I'd like to hear about it.

The enhancement is a web enhancement (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) - available free to all. Scroll about two thirds of the way down the page.

As for the PHB2 one... I'd probably be breaking the OGL by telling you exactly what it does and how it functions, but you mentioned that you can look it up.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If you really wanna see how to pimp a divine crusader, it was the secret ingredient in an Iron Chef in the Playground contest. The op of the current IC has a link.

[pyromanser244]

I am glad I made this thread. soooo many good ideas came out of it.

after a little searching hexblade is a lot better than I thought. getting mettle without PrCs helps feats, the familiar can be kept or dropped for flexible building, and both bluff and intimidate as class skills make both feinting and scare tactics potentially viable. can't say I care for only applying cha to saves vs. spells and SLAs but that's 1 of the few down sides.

paladin gets to heal and his saves are always good. and I can take the extra smite feat for more of that early class feature, which hexblade can't. and there are the immunities, but can't the protection from X spell do preaty much that anyway? the biggest downside is the reliance on fighter/pious templar for mettle. apart from stopping me from getting turn undead, which hurts, even more so when you add in battle dancer.
(OMG battle dancer! now mailmen can hate me too. :smallbiggrin:)
so to get the best out of paladin, all my spells need to come a level late :smallmad:, or if I take BD anyway 2 levels late. :smallfurious:

with battle dancer, ardent champion is sooo tempting but nowhere near the power it should have. can't get mage armor from either spell list (why is that a conjuration spell???:smallfurious::smallfurious::smallfurious: ) and it doesn't help the protection spells at all. a +9 shield is nice but I'm not sure it's worth the 5 levels.

unseen seer looks much better. extra damage, extra spells known, and an extra feat. all this for the cost of better detection magic and free permanent nondetection? only 1 question; does the nondetection count as me being the caster or no? cause if I'm the caster I've got way better than average chance of being invisible till I'm slitting throats. :smallcool:

hmmm question, do you take protection from X as 1 spell or do you have to take them individually?

[TuggyNE]

hmmm question, do you take protection from X as 1 spell or do you have to take them individually?

It's a set of four similar spells; they are otherwise unrelated, so you need to know them individually.

[pyromanser244]

It's a set of four similar spells; they are otherwise unrelated, so you need to know them individually.

oh well, there's always wands.