Quick Question regarding spells\wands and Non-wizards

[Teryon]

Basically, if Im a fighter\warblade\non-reality-warper, and I'm using a wand, do I apply my spell levels regarding damage, or those of the initial crafter? Same question regarding weapons that produce spell effects(shocking grasp being the pertinent spell).

I'd haveve searched, but it seems the search function's gone.

[Answerer]

I assume by "spell levels" you mean "caster level" and the answer is "the caster level that the item was crafted with." Items with higher-than-minimum CLs are more expensive, but you should be able to find and/or commission such items. The items listed in the books are always at minimum CL, and that's the price that you have.

Note: staves are an exception, a staff uses the CL of the one activating it if that's better than the one it was made with.

[Teryon]

*nod* I did mean caster levels. Clear enough for wands(though it does make equipping my warforged arm-cannon somewhat expensive). I just wanted to make sure I was calculating properly.

Thanks.

[Answerer]

Generally speaking, wand-use usually focuses on spells that don't benefit much from Caster Level, or are good without high CL. For damage, usually things other than wands are used. For an arm-mounted shock-cannon... I'm sure there are options but none are jumping to mind. Refluffed Dragonfire Adept using the lightning breath shape, or refluffed Warlock with the lightning eldritch essence, I suppose. That requires some class levels, though.

[Teryon]

Generally speaking, wand-use usually focuses on spells that don't benefit much from Caster Level, or are good without high CL. For damage, usually things other than wands are used. For an arm-mounted shock-cannon... I'm sure there are options but none are jumping to mind. Refluffed Dragonfire Adept using the lightning breath shape, or refluffed Warlock with the lightning eldritch essence, I suppose. That requires some class levels, though.

Undoubtedly alot of options, but there's only so-much multiclassing I can accept, or my DM will accept(the kind of 6-class dipping seen around here is usually given the 'Oh, c'mon' look). It's more a sort of expansion on the idea of Warforged being magical robots, and the fact that I've always loved the idea of an arm cannon, my prime inspiration being Megatron.

I'm willing to accept alternative suggestions, since in-game we've just plane-shifted out of Eberron into Sigil by way of an intense planar alignment and a butt-ton of power letting one of those picky Doors show up. So, most of D&D is available theoretically, I know we're heading to Faerun for a bit and are avoiding places like Athas and similar crapsack places(Eberron is *enough* for us really).

[Answerer]

I think you're unnecessarily limiting 3.5's only strong-suit by restricting multiclassing.

[Teryon]

Well, perhaps it's a perspective thing. How exactly DO you explain having the various classes and such? We're running this odd sort of mix, primarily pathfinder but the DM's started to allow 3.5 material again. I bought a copy of the Tomb of Battle to become a warblade, and it's kind of spiraled from there.

What the character is, is Karrn the Conqueror, his soul reborn into a warforged body. I can't imagine the man 'getting' magic well enough to become a wizard or something.

Mechanically, I just don't have the encyclopedic knowledge of every single class to pull off multiclassing properly.

[Slipperychicken]

I think you're unnecessarily limiting 3.5's only strong-suit by restricting multiclassing.

It also gets a lot easier when you accept classes as metagame constructs.


Fighter20 = I hit things with a stick in one very specific, repetitive, easily-countered way, and am probably bad at it. Any tactic other than my chosen maneuver leaves me dead in pile of AoOs and regret.

Fighter17/Warblade3 = I hit things with a stick, sometimes pull off fancy footwork, or use a different technique to smack things with sticks. I am halfway decent at my job, and have several hit-it-with-a-stick tactics to kill my enemy.

Fighter12/Warblade6/Crusader6 = I am a non-Neutral who hits things with a stick, am good at it, sometimes pull off fancy footwork, can sometimes hit things for more damage than normal, and can tank damage decently with the right feats and equipment.

You see where this is going?

[ericgrau]

Damage wands are good if you have an additional source of damage as well, because they are touch attacks. As a fighter warblade you can't do much besides weapon specialization, and that's underwhelming. Maybe there's some maneuver I don't know about but I thought most of those only applied to melee and only attack actions.

A spellwarp sniper or an arcane trickster could be good for the arm cannon concept. Or even a rogue with UMD or a 1 level caster dip.
PrC: Advances casting and sneak attack but a little behind in both
UMD Rogue: Maximum sneak attack damage but no casting outside of the wands, also takes some levels before your UMD is high enough.
Rogue w/ 1 level caster dip: Slightly less sneak attack damage and BAB than pure rogue but it comes online right away.

I wouldn't put down any gaming group's particular mentality on optimization. Maybe you could do better and get more involved in character generation with more optimization, but unless everyone else is willing to put in equal time and effort and has enough experience with 3.5 to do so it's going to be unfair and unbalancing. Maybe after everyone has played a bit and don't mind devoting even more energy to D&D then the DM could loosen the restrictions.

[Answerer]

Well, perhaps it's a perspective thing. How exactly DO you explain having the various classes and such? We're running this odd sort of mix, primarily pathfinder but the DM's started to allow 3.5 material again. I bought a copy of the Tomb of Battle to become a warblade, and it's kind of spiraled from there.

What the character is, is Karrn the Conqueror, his soul reborn into a warforged body. I can't imagine the man 'getting' magic well enough to become a wizard or something.

Mechanically, I just don't have the encyclopedic knowledge of every single class to pull off multiclassing properly.
Mostly by not limiting classes to being strictly exactly what Wizards wrote them as.

A Warlock could be some dude whose ancestor made an unwise choice re: his relationship with fiends (or fey), but it could just as easily be Megaman. A Crusader could be a zealous warrior of faith, guided by divine inspiration from moment to moment, but he could just as easily be an impulsive berserker, running into the fray and turning his own pain into fuel for his rage.

And when you multiclass, your character doesn't (usually) think "I'm a Fighter/Wizard/Eldritch Knight," he thinks "I am a warrior-mage, weaver of the great battle-magics" or whatever. There's a pretty cool thread here where someone came up with a character who had 1 level in each of 20 different classes – but the character was fairly coherent. He was a wanderer, interested in song, faith, and magic, but most of all in protecting those around him. Hence his levels in things like Bard, Crusader, Abjurant Champion, Sublime Chord, etc. A minstrel who turned to god and then to magic to protect people.

[Slipperychicken]

And when you multiclass, your character doesn't (usually) think "I'm a Fighter/Wizard/Eldritch Knight," he thinks "I am a warrior-mage, weaver of the great battle-magics"

Real people don't even go that far. It's not like army engineers think "I am an engineer; artificer of battle, who maintains the savage beast of war!". They think "I'm the guy who keeps the tanks moving". I'm willing to bet a Fighter/Wizard would just think of himself as a Wizard who can take a hit.

If you asked a Fighter, Barbarian, Crusader, Warblade, Swordsage, Paladin, Ranger, Samurai, Warrior, or spear-weilding Commoner what they were, you'd get some variation of "I'm a soldier", or "I'm a fighter", Maybe the occasional "I'm a soldier of god", if they're working for a church. And from an in-character perspective, that's about as deep as you can go.

[nedz]

You've obviously not met people with levels in Art Historian or Literary Critic :smallbiggrin:

[TuggyNE]

You've obviously not met people with levels in Art Historian or Literary Critic :smallbiggrin:

You mean Aristocrat? :smalltongue:

[Teryon]

Hrm. Ok, so view classes as a sort of meta-construct. I can do that.

Quick recommendations for a 1 or 2-lvl dip for some fairly impressive blasting capabilities? I know thats not the absolute best way to go about things, but we have an actual wizard and I'm trying to convince him to do more than 'fireball'. If the big metal dude does it better, might help ;)

Stats can be listed if necessary.

[nedz]

I'm not sure that a 2 level sip is going to get you awesome blasting, not that blasting is very awesome anyway.

A 1 level dip in Sorcerer would get you 2 spells known and the ability to use arcane wands. Add Practised Spellcaster to raise your CL to 5, if relevant.

A Bard dip would be similar, maybe you could have a juke-box module fitted ?

Warlock might also be amusing.
The 1d6 blast you get, for 1 or 2 levels, will not be that impressive, unless you can add sneak or something, but the other invocations can add some cool abilities.
4 levels would get you the ability to take 10 on UMD checks, so 10 ranks or so and you can activate wands at will.

Cool effects you could get include things like

Shatter at will
Darkvision and See Invisible
Spiderclimb and Web immunity
Comprehend Languages and +6 to Spot and Search

There are many more, mainly in CArc and Cmage

You could re-fluff it as a weird module of some kind ?
Just keep adding 'modules' for each invocation.

[Teryon]

I'm not sure that a 2 level sip is going to get you awesome blasting, not that blasting is very awesome anyway.

A 1 level dip in Sorcerer would get you 2 spells known and the ability to use arcane wands. Add Practised Spellcaster to raise your CL to 5, if relevant.

A Bard dip would be similar, maybe you could have a juke-box module fitted ?

Warlock might also be amusing.
The 1d6 blast you get, for 1 or 2 levels, will not be that impressive, unless you can add sneak or something, but the other invocations can add some cool abilities.
4 levels would get you the ability to take 10 on UMD checks, so 10 ranks or so and you can activate wands at will.

Cool effects you could get include things like

Shatter at will
Darkvision and See Invisible
Spiderclimb and Web immunity
Comprehend Languages and +6 to Spot and Search

There are many more, mainly in CArc and Cmage

You could re-fluff it as a weird module of some kind ?
Just keep adding 'modules' for each invocation.

Oh, considering the nature of the current game, module upgrades combined with force-of-will alterations of the body(playing up the Warblade as a Nietzschean Will-to-Power alteration of the world to fit how you think it should be).

But isn't warlock, well, underwhelming? Granted, I'm only half-aware of why that might be, I'm assuming it's ultimately a lack of utility spells and lower spell damage.

Isn't there some way of including like 1\2 class levels towards spellcasting?

Granted, I suppose I could just snag swordsage, but that's more melee.

[ericgrau]

Hrm. Ok, so view classes as a sort of meta-construct. I can do that.

Quick recommendations for a 1 or 2-lvl dip for some fairly impressive blasting capabilities? I know thats not the absolute best way to go about things, but we have an actual wizard and I'm trying to convince him to do more than 'fireball'. If the big metal dude does it better, might help ;)

Stats can be listed if necessary.

Hey man if a fireball doesn't solve a problem that only means you need more fireball. :smalltongue: Though seriously as far as blasting goes fireball isn't bad, he just needs to branch out a bit into other types of casting.

You won't be able to beat his area damage but you can probably out-do him on single targets. A simple sorcerer or wizard dip is fine to get access to arcane wands. Or a cleric with the magic domain to get both arcane and divine. The drawback is you don't get feather fall, true strike, identify and grease. This is all assuming you're ditching fighter/warblade and making them into rogue levels. If you're already playing that character it's a lot harder. There's the double wand wielder feat in complete arcana which is handy. It requires a caster level of 5 to get craft wand so pick up practiced spellcaster (Complete Arcane) too if you aren't using a hybrid prestige class.

Surprise round you get a sneak attack, so stealth skills or a wand of invisibility helps. Round 1 a foe that hasn't acted yet is flat-footed, so you get another sneak attack. Round 2 you grease. Anyone still standing on that grease without 5 ranks in balance is flat-footed so you sneak attack. Later you instead get greater invisibility or a ring of blinking. Or if you don't expect to use the trigger more than once or twice anyway you attack without sneak attack; the extra round will probably add more damage anyway. Note that volley spells such as scorching ray still only get 1 sneak attack per spell.

Feats: 1 practiced spellcaster, 3 two-weapon fighting, 5 craft wand, 7 dual wand wielding.

[Teryon]

Unfortunately, character's been in play for awhile now, not any real way to try and convert to rogue or any other kind of sneak-attack class; granted, we've taken to calling 'im the Batforged, so a later dip might prove useful once I get some enchantments and a few more pts in stealth.

[nedz]

Oh, considering the nature of the current game, module upgrades combined with force-of-will alterations of the body(playing up the Warblade as a Nietzschean Will-to-Power alteration of the world to fit how you think it should be).

But isn't warlock, well, underwhelming? Granted, I'm only half-aware of why that might be, I'm assuming it's ultimately a lack of utility spells and lower spell damage.

Isn't there some way of including like 1\2 class levels towards spellcasting?

Granted, I suppose I could just snag swordsage, but that's more melee.

Eldritch Blast is underwhelming, unless you specifically build for it, but the other stuff might be interesting. It was just an idea.

What are your mental stats, out of interest ?

[Teryon]

14 Cha and Int, 10 wis(had to have a dump stat somewhere).