Heavy Armor Without Losing Caster Levels

[koboldish]

Alright! Hello everyone! For the next game I will be playing in, I'm going to be running a transmutation specialist dwarf gish. I want to go into the Runesmith PRC, but it has heavy armor proficiency as a prerequisite. Is there an easy way to get that without losing any caster levels (or having to spend 3 feats)?
I know this is probably a simple question, but if anyone has an answer, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Vaz]

Edit; Ignore.

[Slipperychicken]

Cast Greater Luminous Armor from BoED. Kind of like Mage Armor, but gives +8 AC and some other goodies for hours/level. It's a Sanctified spell, so any Good-aligned prepared caster can use it, even if it's not in his book.

So yeah, in most ways, it's actually better than "real" armor.

Herp derp didn't read the OP

[tyckspoon]

A dip in Dragonslayer gives +1 BAB, +1 spellcasting advancement, and martial weapon and all armor proficiencies. On the downside, the prereqs are pretty obnoxious- BAB +5 and Dodge and Iron Will feats. Might work if you're building at high level and can afford to put off entry into Runesmith (pad out the build until Dragonslayer with other PrCs), but personally I'd just sacrifice the caster level for a Fighter dip or something. Makes it a lot easier to fill your levels with those tasty full BAB/spellcasting advancement levels.

[koboldish]

Well... Greater luminous armor does basically the same thing, except the heavy armor I want has a +12 bonus. And it's a fourth level spell. And it takes away 1d3 points of strength. So, it's very good, and stacks with actual armor. Unfortunately, not quite what I'm looking for. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: Sorry, didn't see your post, tyckspoon. I will be building at lower levels, so dragonslayer probably wouldn't work. I know a fighter dip is the easiest, but I really want that caster level...
Oh, and aparently luminous armor doesn't stack with regualr armor :(. It still stacks with mage armor though... So... that's +12 right there. But I still want entry to Runesmith... I don't know.

[Piggy Knowles]

Sadly, I have yet to find a better solution than either eating the three feats, or dipping into cleric for a level. Dragonslayer works but it only saves you a single feat, and delays entry by a good bit.

On the plus side, dipping cleric for a level can give you things like turning and domain bonuses. I played an AC-focused Cleric 1/Wizard 5/Runesmith 4 in a PBP once and it was pretty fun.

[koboldish]

The cleric abilities are pretty limited at level 1. Do you think it's still better than dipping into fighter for a level? What are some of the pros and cons?

[Emperor Tippy]

The cleric abilities are pretty limited at level 1. Do you think it's still better than dipping into fighter for a level? What are some of the pros and cons?

You get to use wands of cleric spells and qualify for a number of feats.

Fighter gets you +1 AB and an extra feat.

[Vaz]

You could Dark Chaos Shuffle it, but that's not a brilliant way of managing it.

If you're a Wizard-type, you need 17 levels of spellcasting to gain 9th level spells; so you can take 3 levels in non-advancement and take Practised Spellcaster to off-set the lower CL and yet still have 9th's.

Even one level in such as class; Fighter, OA Samurai, Marshal (If Cha focused), Ardent, Crusader, Warrior Skald, etc all provide some very useful benefits.

[Piggy Knowles]

The cleric abilities are pretty limited at level 1. Do you think it's still better than dipping into fighter for a level? What are some of the pros and cons?

I do. Check out Dipping Cleric 1 (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=2773) for some ideas of what you can do. Turn undead opens up several feat options, and your two domains can grant you additional abilities, feats, etc.

On my own dwarven AC machine, I took the Law and Magic domains, trading Law away for Law Devotion. That meant I was picking up an additional +5 sacred bonus to AC (which would have eventually gone up to +7 if the campaign lasted longer), and I used the Magic domain to have access to spell trigger items from my banned schools (in addition to the fact that I could also nab items of cleric spells). I'd say that was significantly more useful than the martial weapon proficiency and more limited bonus feat that fighter would have given me.

[fishyfishyfishy]

If you take a Cleric dip you get two domains and a turn/rebuke undead pool. This allows you to qualify for a great many other things as well. For example, if you choose the Magic domain you can now qualify for Dweomerkeeper and can take your last few levels in it.

Edit: Looking at the Runesmith again I see that it's only a 5 level prestige. That means you can end up with something like Wizard 4/Cleric 1/Runesmith 5/Dweomerkeeper 10

[Vaz]

Incidentally Archivist 1, Versatile Spellcaster, Sacred Exorcist 1 (Advance Arcane) Geomancer 1 (Advance arcane) gives you 1 lost caster level in place of being able to cast all spells as if Divine, and a Turn Undead pool with which to DMM persist them.

Add on Incantatrix and Archmage to flavour etc.

Edit @ Above; Cloistered cleric, you mean. Gets you Knowledge Devotion.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Edit @ Above; Cloistered cleric, you mean. Gets you Knowledge Devotion.

Cloistered Cleric doesn't have Heavy Armor prof, which is why he would be taking the dip to begin with.

[tyckspoon]

The cleric abilities are pretty limited at level 1. Do you think it's still better than dipping into fighter for a level? What are some of the pros and cons?

Fighter: The main pro is BAB +1 and full martial proficiency. This lets you easily move into the traditional gish builds with Abjurant Champion levels 0-5 (er, Spellsword 1/Abjurant Champ 5.) Also you get a Fighter bonus feat, and there's probably something useful to take with that.
Cons: It's a Fighter level. You're using it entirely for meeting prereqs for better stuff later on.

Cleric: On its own, this is a *much* stronger dip. Two domains, Turn Undead for use of Divine and Domain devotion feats, the requested heavy armor proficiency, usage of clerical spell items, and much more relevant skill list.
Con: No BAB bump and no martial weapon proficiency. Not a huge deal if you didn't want to use the 'traditional' gishing level plan, but the Cleric dip will not get you into Spellsword. (If you take the War domain with a deity that has the Warhammer or Dwarven Waraxe, tho, it will get you into Abjurant Champion.)

I'd probably do something like Cleric, Law and War Domains, trade the Law power for the Law Devotion feat.

[Jeraa]

Edit: Sorry, didn't see your post, tyckspoon. I will be building at lower levels, so dragonslayer probably wouldn't work. I know a fighter dip is the easiest, but I really want that caster level...
Oh, and aparently luminous armor doesn't stack with regualr armor :(. It still stacks with mage armor though... So... that's +12 right there. But I still want entry to Runesmith... I don't know.

Luminous Armor won't stack with Mage Armor either. Both provide an armor bonus to AC, and armor bonuses don't stack with other armor bonuses.

[koboldish]

With full martial proficiency, I get access to all of the cool dwarven exotic weapons. The extra feat also lets me qualify for dwarven exotic armors, which can provide up to a +10 bonus to AC. I will go look at the cleric dipping page, as it seems very interesting. I do like the martial proficiencies though.

[Vaz]

Cloistered Cleric doesn't have Heavy Armor prof, which is why he would be taking the dip to begin with.
Really? Everyday's an education.

[koboldish]

Actually, I just realised something. We have a 28 point buy, so my current wisdom score is an 8. Even without spellcasting, those travel devotion abilities are still pretty epic. Still not sure what to do here.

[Zonugal]

Another approach is using Crusader, which is really nice.

In a build like: Dwarf Wizard 4/Crusader 1/Runesmith 4/Abjurant Champion 5/Jade Pheonix Mage 5/Runesmith 1

Your first dip into Crusader will nab you 2nd-level maneuvers (in addition to the Heavy Armor Proficiency) which can be nice what with Mountain Hammer being very utility-minded, Devoted Spirit opening up some healing and White Raven for some additional tactical ability. As you progress in your build you'll once again come back to Crusader via Jade Pheonic Mage and get access to 6th-level maneuvers for your time in that prestige class. You'll end with access to access to 9th-level maneuvers (An IL of 17), ninth-level spells (A CL of 18) , a BaB of +16, and with the last level of Runesmith you can convert a spell into a SLA.

[koboldish]

None of us actually have Tome of Battle (I know! What kind of players are we! We're terrible!). Also, if I upped the wisdom and dumped something else, the cleric dipping build would qualify for dweomerkeeper :smallbiggrin:.

[Slipperychicken]

stacks with actual armor.

IIRC, it gives an Armor bonus, so I don't think it stacks with normal armor.

[koboldish]

Yep. I had an edit in at the bottom after I finished reading the spell. The travel devotion feat is amazing, so I would take that for sure. I also need a feat for exotic armor proficiency... And a metamagic for dweomerkeeper. Any feat suggestions? Thanks again for your contributions.

As a sidenote: The dwarf will be named Old Man Willakers. Fight the zombies, drink your juice.

[Piggy Knowles]

Yep. I had an edit in at the bottom after I finished reading the spell. The travel devotion feat is amazing, so I would take that for sure. I also need a feat for exotic armor proficiency... And a metamagic for dweomerkeeper. Any feat suggestions? Thanks again for your contributions.

As a sidenote: The dwarf will be named Old Man Willakers. Fight the zombies, drink your juice.

Extend Spell is never a bad choice for metamagic. I don't know that I've ever played a primary caster without it. (Well, unless you count that terrible sorcerer I played in my first ever 3.0 campaign...)

[fishyfishyfishy]

You could go the route of extend spell, persist spell the divine metamagic: persist spell so that you can burn through those useless turn undead attempts for 24hour buffs. All you need is Extend Spell to get you started.

[koboldish]

Wow. Divine metamagic is surprisingly effective. I'll make sure to put that in.

[Chronos]

Note that Divine Metamagic was errataed to only work with divine spells, which you'll have very few of, unless you pull something to let your arcane spells count as divine.

[koboldish]

Awww.... Dangit. I didn't realise there was errata for that. Anyways, is there a way to make them count as divine? Or a more effective metamagic reducer?

[Bakkan]

Geomancer is a somewhat ambiguously-worded prestige class that might allow your wizard spells top count as divine for the purposes of Divine Metamagic, but quite possibly might not. Also, I don't recall what the prereqs are, but you'd probably have to invest some more in getting in.

[Piggy Knowles]

Awww.... Dangit. I didn't realise there was errata for that. Anyways, is there a way to make them count as divine? Or a more effective metamagic reducer?

Alternate Source Spell definitely works, but it's from Dragon. Southern Magician sort of works, but has some limitations. Geomancer can pull it off but requires a high level investment to work with anything but your lowest level spells.

If you weren't a Runesmith (and hence a dwarf), an illumian with the naenhoon sigils can effectively use DMM twice a day on any spell, arcane or divine.

Anyhow, a three level dip into Incantatrix and maxing Spellcraft can get you quite a few metamagic shenanigans.

[Venusaur]

If you grab a level in Binder, you can bind Sovok everyday for heavy armor proficiency and get into Anima Mage, which is incredible.

[Thurbane]

If you dip into Marshal, you can get you Cha to spell penetration checks - although as a Dwarf Wizard, Cha is probably a dump stat...

Duskblade gets heavy armor and martial weapon proficiency, and a dip gets you some 1st levels spells and some SLAs.