So, Incantatrix is Pretty...Lame

[Trunamer]

...At least until you get to 7th level. Sure the bonus feats are nice, but the other abilities are largely useless even with additional skill optimization. Is the PrC even worth the additional banned school until its later levels?

Not complaining, I just expected more after all the hype.

[Story]

Well obviously the 1st level isn't that great, but even Cooperative Metamagic is amazing, and it just gets more ridiculous from there.

[Carth]

Level 2 and level 3 are great milestones, and 4 gets you a feat if you stick around. If it's more of a solo scenario level 2 isn't great, but level 3 is fantastic, metamagic effect is one of the most broken abilities in the game.

[Story]

Level 3 is still good even by yourself. Just persist all your buffs after they're already cast.

[Carth]

Oops, off by 1 on my assumptions of where abilities arrive. Of course, even in a solo setting, there's always body outside body. :smallbiggrin:

[Agincourt]

I'm going to agree with Carth. Metamagic effect is ridiculous, and you get it at level 3. You need to max out your spellcraft, and then you can add metamagic feats, for free, to spells that have been already cast. A lot of people like to use Persistant Spell, which can make for some hard to make spellcraft checks. If you can make it, then great. Extend Spell is a lot easier, though. There's no reason you can't use Heighten Spell to make the DC harder on say Cloudkill. Fell Drain is another great feat to add on something like Acid Fog.

You get to use metamagic effect 3+ Int, per day. Wizard characters can easily do this 6 times a day, and a dozen times is not hard to do.

Yes, this is definitely worth 1 banned school, by itself, and the other abilities are just gravy.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

People have gone over the greatness of Cooperative Metamagic and Metamagic Effect, but let me show how the numbers add up:

The DC to apply Persistent Spell to an Nth level spell is 36 + 3*N. So, for a 5th level spell like Draconic Polymorph, the DC is 51. Let's see what we can do at level 9 to hit that DC:

Take 10
+12 ranks
+6 INT (conservatively)
+2 (Synergy) 5 ranks in Knowledge: Arcana
+3 (Untyped) Skill Focus
+2 (Circumstance) Masterwork Tool
+3 or +6 (Untyped) Moth familiar
+4 (Insight) Mage's Spectacles
+7 (Competence) from a reasonable skill-boosting item*
+2 (Untyped) from Share Talents, a level 2 spell that lasts 10 minutes/level
=
51

*There are printed +5 items; in this case you need one of the below.

"Sometimes" options:
+2 (morale) from Heroism
+X from Loresong (Dragon #335)

Cheesier options:
+20 competence from UMD'd eternal wand of Guidance of the Avatar
+lots from Item Familiar.

It's also easier if party members are helping you, but as you can see, you can persist 3+INT number of Personal or Fixed Range spells of whatever level you can cast, per day. Due to ranks, in order to keep up with spell level you just need an additional +1 per two levels to come from somewhere.

[Felyndiira]

Are you looking at the 3.0 version of the Incantatrix or the 3.5 version?

The 3.0 version is quite a bit weaker. See Ethereal and Strike Ethereal are not very useful abilities due to how specialized they are, so it won't be until 6th level (immune to death effects) where that version actually gets anywhere good.

The 3.5 version, on the other hand...here's a guide to the 3.5 version with all of the class features in it. See for yourself :smallsmile:. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=223438)

[Lonely Tylenol]

I'm going to agree with Carth. Metamagic effect is ridiculous, and you get it at level 3. You need to max out your spellcraft, and then you can add metamagic feats, for free, to spells that have been already cast. A lot of people like to use Persistant Spell, which can make for some hard to make spellcraft checks. If you can make it, then great. Extend Spell is a lot easier, though. There's no reason you can't use Heighten Spell to make the DC harder on say Cloudkill. Fell Drain is another great feat to add on something like Acid Fog.

You get to use metamagic effect 3+ Int, per day. Wizard characters can easily do this 6 times a day, and a dozen times is not hard to do.

Yes, this is definitely worth 1 banned school, by itself, and the other abilities are just gravy.

And let's not forget Cooperative Metamagic in all this: Cooperative Metamagic lets you Persist all of the things. Even the things not cast by you. Hell, I used to use it to Chain every buff the Cleric or Bard ever cast, and then just Metamagic Effect my own (or cast multi-target buffs), which resulted in a ludicrous amount of buffing from a lot of different sources (this was a party with a lot of people in it) very early in the game.

On top of that, Easy Metamagic (the capstone) is worth the ten-level investment, especially since you get four metamagic feats along the way, and Instant Metamagic and Snatch Spell are both good abilities (although Snatch Spell is just "good"). Considering that the cost of this class is one feat you don't get for free (Iron Will), ranks in three skills you should have ranks in, and one banned school (pick one you don't like), unless you are using some weird build that absolutely must have all schools available, or you're trying to fulfill a specific niche, Incantatrix is pretty much a no-brainer.

[Felyndiira]

On top of that, Easy Metamagic (the capstone) is worth the ten-level investment, especially since you get four metamagic feats along the way, and Instant Metamagic and Snatch Spell are both good abilities (although Snatch Spell is just "good"). Considering that the cost of this class is one feat you don't get for free (Iron Will), ranks in three skills you should have ranks in, and one banned school (pick one you don't like), unless you are using some weird build that absolutely must have all schools available, or you're trying to fulfill a specific niche, Incantatrix is pretty much a no-brainer.

There are reasons for a caster to not go all the way to the capstone, however. For example, if the caster needs more cheese for the fondue and also wants to max out Initiate of the Seven Veils.

Not to say that easy metamagic isn't ridiculously good, of course :smallsmile:.

[Darth Stabber]

Can't tell if OP is trolling or just not reading the class right.

Here's the thing about picking a banned school for incantrix, necromancy is very bannable after 4th level. At lvl 4 spells you have enervate and animate dead, and therefore you can ignore the rest of school and not feel deprived, you have the two banner spells of the school, and the rest of the school has some nice things, but not that nice.

[Greenish]

Can't tell if OP is trolling or just not reading the class right.These threads pop up regularly, almost invariably because the OP is referring to the old version of the class.

[Darth Stabber]

These threads pop up regularly, almost invariably because the OP is referring to the old version of the class.

Even then, it's still full caster progression and better than loremaster (loremaster is my yardstick because it's srd and fairly easy to qualify for, and archmage is only 5 levels). Now the old version isn't on par with Iot7FV, like the 3.5 version is, but let's face it that is a very high bar. That being said I do miss 3.0 archmage, +5to save dcs over 5 levels, pure gold.

[Story]

+20 competence from UMD'd eternal wand of Guidance of the Avatar

Technically, you can't make eternal wands of Divine spells, and you don't need UMD for them anyway. But a regular wand would work.

[Carth]

The real money is in just cranking up your int score, because that also ups your spells per day and spell DCs, in addition to spellcraft. I've seen a post that showed how to get a +21 int mod at level 20 up around the clock, but I can't find it at the moment. I'm not sure how that'd scale along the way to level 20.

[Eldariel]

...At least until you get to 7th level. Sure the bonus feats are nice, but the other abilities are largely useless even with additional skill optimization. Is the PrC even worth the additional banned school until its later levels?

And this is probably precisely how it got past WotC. Owait, it's Faerun, nevermind.

[Trunamer]

Are you looking at the 3.0 version of the Incantatrix or the 3.5 version?
Hm, I'm looking at the PG to Faerun, copywright March 2004. When did the 3.5 transition happen again? I can never remember.

I suspect I'm looking at the 3.0 version, because the way the Spellcraft DCs scale doesn't square with GoodByeSoberDay's conclusion about only needing an additional +1 Spellcraft per two levels.

[Douglas]

PGtF is 3.5. The 3.0 Incantatrix was in Magic of Faerun and can also be viewed online here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20010803).

Hm, I'm looking at the PG to Faerun, copywright March 2004. When did the 3.5 transition happen again? I can never remember.

I suspect I'm looking at the 3.0 version, because the way the Spellcraft DCs scale doesn't square with GoodByeSoberDay's conclusion about only needing an additional +1 Spellcraft per two levels.
It's easy to misinterpret, but what he really meant was +1 on top of the obvious +2 from skill ranks.

[Piggy Knowles]

Hm, I'm looking at the PG to Faerun, copywright March 2004. When did the 3.5 transition happen again? I can never remember.

I suspect I'm looking at the 3.0 version, because the way the Spellcraft DCs scale doesn't square with GoodByeSoberDay's conclusion about only needing an additional +1 Spellcraft per two levels.

That should actually be the more recent version. The old version was published in 2001, and can be found here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20010803).

The new version is so amazingly good because it allows you to far exceed caps on spells without requiring any additional resource investment. To review the class (without going into too much detail on any particular class feature):

Level 1: A bonus metamagic feat. Will come in handy, as you're going to be very focused on metamagic, but whatever. If bonus feats were all this class gave you, it would NOT be worth dropping a school for.

Level 2: Cooperative Metamagic. Crud, this is actually very good, unless you're the only spellcaster in a party. Make a spellcraft check to apply metamagic, on the fly, to the spells of your allies. Coordinate with your allies to persist and chain every buff they can cast.

Level 3: Metamagic Effect. Incredibly potent. Because it works with ongoing effects, this is also best used on buffs. Again, you'll want to persist and chain every beneficial buff you can.

Level 4: A bonus metamagic feat. You'll pretty much use them all.

Level 5: Metamagic Spell Trigger. Ask the artificer if this ability is of any use. It's actually somewhat less handy for you than the artificer, but it's still quite good. I like using it to stack on things like Fell Drain onto low-level wands of autodamaging spells, as something to do when I don't want to spend any of my spell slots.

Level 6: Seize Concentration means you can steal certain ongoing spells from other casters. It's honestly one of the less useful abilities you'll get, but whatever, it's there.

Level 7: A bonus metamagic feat and Instant Metamagic. Dang, this is huge. It's divine metamagic for free - instead of costing turn attempts, you're limited in how many times per day you can use it. Great for metamagic on the fly, especially with high cost MM feats like Quicken.

Level 8: Snatch Spell. Somewhat more useful than Seize Concentration, but again, this probably isn't your main reason for being an Incantatrix.

Level 9: Another Instant Metamagic use. Sweet.

Level 10: A bonus metamagic feat, and now you decrease the costs of all your MM. Honestly, a properly buffed Incantatrix probably doesn't need this capstone, but that doesn't mean that it's not fantastic.