Mage slayer tips

[Xenovore]

Hey guys,

For my new character I'm looking to create a teleporting mage-slayer build. Here's the basis for the character:

- 5 Levels of Telflammar shadow lord for Shadow Pounce and Shadow Discorporation and probably the rest filled with rogue / swordsage levels.
- The shadow blink / jaunt / stride maneuvers from the shadow hand.
- Mirrored persuit maneuver from the Setting Sun discipline.
- Leaping flame from the Desert Wind discipline.
- The mage slayer feat.
- Practiced spellcaster feat to offset the -4 CL penalty from the mage slayer feat.
- Darkstalker feat to better hide from blindsight and such
- Preferably a race with high spell resistance.
- Preferably a race with flying although grafted wings are possible too.
- Probably will use a reach-weapon such as a chain.
- Total level: 19

I'm thinking to use leaping flame to get close to a caster whenever he attacks me. The blink options should give a nice range of attacks and I like the whole teleporting mage-assassin idea. Wings are also just to be able to keep in-range.

The spell resistance is needed against things such as dimensional anchor and to be more resistant to casters in general. Finally the mage slayer feat allows me to threaten casters without giving them the ability to cast defensively.

I'm also wondering if a dispelling weapon is a good addition.

As for the cheesy shadow pounce - teleport thing: Our GM is fine with the number of attacks as long as the total possible damage does not increase beyond any "normal" damage dealing class. Aka: The more attacks, the lower the damage per attack should be.

Also: We're allowed to use any and all Wizard of the Coast produced 3.5 material.

Does anyone have any more tips that could be fun for this type of character?

[herrhauptmann]

The mageslayer followup feats:
Pierce magic protection lets you dispel AC buffs when you hit.
Blindfight and pierce magic concealment to let you ignore any miss chances derived from a spell.

Choose whichever of those you think will get most used.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Pierce Magical Concealment is the most useful since any degree of concealment neuters your Sneak attack.

I would also suggest the Vecna Blooded (MM V) template to become immune to divinations.

[Feint's End]

what about aoo feats like step up and a crusader dip (or martial stance) for thicket of blades. Otherwise nothing prevents wizards from 5 feet steps away. Also .... swift action teleports gonna screw you (but that's a problem anyways.) ... you also could get a AMF to prevent that since the swordsage shadowjump feats are all ex abilities.

[Karoht]

Not on you necessarily, but on casters in your party, Ring of Spell Battle (MIC) pays for itself in a hurry.
Nothings says anti-caster better than "make your own save DC's"
Or, because you can force the caster to target any other valid target within spell range, make them nuke/CC anyone you want.

Heck, if you have a high enough Spellcraft skill (just enough to beat the DC to identify a 9th level spell) even you can make good use of it. Sadly, once per day. Still, very much worth it.

Pathfinder version of True Strike allows you to ignore concealment. Worth having at least some method of accessing True Strike a few times per day just for that alone. The more expensive solution to that problem being True Seeing.

Seconding Vecna Blooded. Especially if you are going to rely on ambush tactics to get close to any casters. And to avoid any scry-and-die reprisals.

[Fouredged Sword]

I like to make this build work through

Fighter 2 / rouge 2 / monk 2 / swordsage X / TSL X / SS X

Fighter to help get all the feats, monk for ray reflection and focused attack.

A focused attack doubles the damage for ALL attacks for the remainder of your round. You have a swift and move action teleport, and anklets of translocation.

It makes for a great 1->4 power attack conversion after doubling. Use a quarterstaff.

[Person_Man]

Thoughts:

1) At mid-high levels, defeating a caster is mostly about winning Initiative and being able to target that caster, bypass his defenses, and kill the caster before your turn ends. If he's not dead after your turn, you've probably already lost, because on his turn he's going to cast a combat winning spell or use a potent magic item (which does not trigger Mage Slayer) or some other ability (many of the best casters are also monsters). Thus the ability to "lock down" a caster is a lot less important then your ability to target an enemy anywhere on the battlefield and reliably deal (Level * 15ish) points of damage in one turn. Having magical defenses such as Spell Resistance or Evasion (which you can get with a Ring or 2 Feats) helps for when you're fighting multiple casters, but it's secondary.

2) There aren't any races that provide Spell Resistance without level adjustment. And most of the racial Spell Resistances you can get is only Hit Dice + 5 or +10. (50%ish resistance if you're fighting someone with a caster level close to your hit dice). Bauriar (Planar Handbook) is probably your best bet if you want SR from a race, with SR 10 + level for just +1 LA. You can get similar SR from a mid level Binder (Zceryll vestige) or high level Totemist (Dread Carapace soulmeld bound to Heart chakra), and from several meh prestige classes. Daazzix's Vest (25,000 gp, DMG II pg 267) increases existing Spell Resistance by 5. Slave to Evil (Elder Evils pg 14) can improve your Spell Resistance vs Divine spells by 5 (and at high levels can prevent Divine spell casting within a certain radius), but you have to be Evil. But the "winner" in the Spell Resistance department is the Incarnate. Spellward Shirt soulmeld provides 5 + (4 * essentia invested) Spell Resistance, and your essentia capacity can go up to 7 or 8 with a Feat and magic item. (So SR 37, which is 85% Spell Resistance against a 20th level caster, prior to Daazzix's Vest). He also has easy access to Evasion, Energy Resistance, DR, Non-Detection, etc. But Incarnate is mostly defense, and again, winning against casters is mostly about quick offense.

3) It's not that hard to get free movement and Pounce (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=103358) or a lot of attacks or damage. For example, vanilla Warblade 20 can get Sudden Leap (Swift Action movement), White Raven Tactics (extra turn), Pouncing Charge (Pounce), Press the Advantage (extra 5 ft step), Wolf Pack Tactics Tiger Claw stance (free 5 ft step with each successful melee attack, including attacks of opportunity), Quicksilver Motion (swift action movement), plus a Belt of Battle (extra actions), Anklet of Translocation (swift action teleport), and probably a half dozen other methods. Swordsage 20 would probably have even more. And I can give you dozens of different ways to get to 300+ damage per turn reliably. So I personally wouldn't bother with five levels of Telflammar Shadow Lord, which is a serious investment of cruddy pre-req Feats and class levels for a moderately useful ability.

[Xenovore]

Thanks a lot guys! It'll take me a bit during the weekend to check out all stuff and evaluate all options. These are some great tips!

[A_S]

1) At mid-high levels, defeating a caster is mostly about winning Initiative and being able to target that caster, bypass his defenses, and kill the caster before your turn ends. If he's not dead after your turn, you've probably already lost, because on his turn he's going to cast a combat winning spell or use a potent magic item (which does not trigger Mage Slayer) or some other ability (many of the best casters are also monsters). Thus the ability to "lock down" a caster is a lot less important then your ability to target an enemy anywhere on the battlefield and reliably deal (Level * 15ish) points of damage in one turn. Having magical defenses such as Spell Resistance or Evasion (which you can get with a Ring or 2 Feats) helps for when you're fighting multiple casters, but it's secondary.
I don't exactly wanna disagree with this, but maybe provide a couple caveats. What you're saying is absolutely true about anybody who's playing a caster the way a good player of D&D does. That said, many DM's do not play their casters that way. In some cases, that's because they aren't good at playing casters, but I think more often, it's because pulling punches with your spell selection can lead to more fun fights.

Like, let's say the party is up against a necromancer and his army of undead minions. The most optimal thing for the necromancer to do is probably to cast Time Stop and then blanket the party with no-save-just-lose crowd control before hiding himself inside of a Prismatic Sphere and letting the zombie horde clean up the mess, or something. But the fun thing for him to do is to stack up with a bunch of defensive buffs that will take the party several rounds to get through, maybe dominate the guy with the lowest will save, dispel the buffs that are keeping the Cleric-zilla safe from the undead, and lay down some Cones of Uttercold to heal his minions and blast the party.

If the party is playing tier 1 casters to their full potential, then obviously the DM pretty much has to respond in kind, but I find that in a lot of games you can pull punches on your casters and it'll lead to more fun fights.

-----

So, with regard to the OP, what's relevant here is that if your DM is playing his or her casters below their potential to prolong fights, defenses against magic are much more important than if the casters are looking to win fights in one round.

[Xenovore]

To answer your question:
Our GM is a bit of a fruitcake. He's the type of player that always creates a min/max character with fun, yet doubtable, tricks (at least fun for himself).

Since he's GM he also kept on being a player in the party, now filling the healer role with an odd super-AC-untouchable-cleric / thing. That's fine though since he plays this character very passively in the group. He keeps out of the roleplaying puzzles and just throws a little heal here and there. Sometimes he'll help out in damaging but all in all he plays it quite balanced.

His GM style is similar. He keeps things reasonably balanced and challenging but not too challenging. And where he makes things too powerful he's not afraid to aid the players a little extra when needed. Still, he will not save players that die through normal means or their own fault, as should be.

That said, the monsters are what you basically can expect from his playstyle. Sometimes they'll surprise you and do things a player would do, other times they will be as dumb as a rock.

The intention of my character is not to make something very OP but simple fill a player-vs-NPC task within the group: mage slaying. Our party currently consists of the following party members:

- A knight on a wing-grafted battle-titan mount that acts as tank.
- A worthless hellfire-warlock that dies 90% of the sessions.
- A tibit ninja/swordsage/Telflammar shadow lord with high damage output.
- An untouchable cleric-thing played by our GM as healer.
- My old character: Blinky the blinking Shadow Twilight Dragon (Telflammar Shadow Lord 5 / Warblade 10 "Tiger Claw specialized" / Swordsage 1) with the Wyrm of Battle archetype.

Although the blinking twilight dragon is great fun, there already is a "rogue" type in the party for general rogue-ness. What we seem to struggle with is casters. That is why I thought taking the mage-slayer task would be a fun role.

[Person_Man]

I don't exactly wanna disagree with this, but maybe provide a couple caveats. What you're saying is absolutely true about anybody who's playing a caster the way a good player of D&D does. That said, many DM's do not play their casters that way. In some cases, that's because they aren't good at playing casters, but I think more often, it's because pulling punches with your spell selection can lead to more fun fights.

Like, let's say the party is up against a necromancer and his army of undead minions. The most optimal thing for the necromancer to do is probably to cast Time Stop and then blanket the party with no-save-just-lose crowd control before hiding himself inside of a Prismatic Sphere and letting the zombie horde clean up the mess, or something. But the fun thing for him to do is to stack up with a bunch of defensive buffs that will take the party several rounds to get through, maybe dominate the guy with the lowest will save, dispel the buffs that are keeping the Cleric-zilla safe from the undead, and lay down some Cones of Uttercold to heal his minions and blast the party.

If the party is playing tier 1 casters to their full potential, then obviously the DM pretty much has to respond in kind, but I find that in a lot of games you can pull punches on your casters and it'll lead to more fun fights.

-----

So, with regard to the OP, what's relevant here is that if your DM is playing his or her casters below their potential to prolong fights, defenses against magic are much more important than if the casters are looking to win fights in one round.

So I agree with your caveats, but I think my advice is still mostly sound. If a enemy spellcaster is standing 100 feet away from the player behind a bunch of minions and casting sub-optimal spells, the easiest way to defeat him is still to deal a bunch of direct damage quickly. Now perhaps this will backfire from a metagame perspective, and the DM will start having enemy spellcasters work in teams, or give them ridiculous defenses. But again, the solution is always to kill them quickly and have strong Saves and/or magical defenses to defend against counter attacks. "Locking down" enemies with battlefield control tactics is generally something you do to waves of mooks to prevent them from attacking you all at once, not boss enemies.

Now obviously there are always exceptions. For example, I think it's a good idea to get a solid Daze effect or otherwise have a way to deny a "boss" enemy their actions, in case it really does take several rounds to kill them. It's just that Mage Slayer itself isn't that great at doing so, because it only applies to a subset of enemies, and it doesn't prevent them from other abilities.

[Karoht]

To second what Person Man is saying about inflicting big amounts of damage quickly, understand that DnD is built more around the alpha strike than it is around sustained damage. At later levels it is basically rocket tag. Casters are usually really good at Rocket Tag because they have advantages like movement, action economy, initiative or surprise, multi-pronged attack strategies, and multi-pronged defenses to protect from the Rocket Tag of others.

[Orran]

As a counter point to Person Man's posts, it is possible to make a melee character who locks down enemy casters, although probably not optimal. If you can get into melee range and drastically reduce their ability to cast, you can then take your time.

On the list of things you should be looking to have to do so:
Reach (10ft minimum, preferably 15)
Anticipate teleportation (for those pesky Immediate/Swift short range teleports)
Mage Slayer
The highest chance to hit and interrupt spells you can get (Pierce Magical Concealment, double hit, improved combat reflexes)
Teleportation, or a similar ability to get within melee range of a spellcaster
Thicket of blades
Ring of Silent Spells
Stand Still/Trip

So the idea is, you teleport or move next to a spellcaster and activate your silence effect. The spellcaster can't move away without provoking, and then getting stopped, they can't cast unless they have silent spell, and those spells provoke, unless they're still or swift. They can't shadow cloak/anklets of translocation/other swift action teleport. This leaves them with the aforementioned spells, magic items, or class abilites. It seems a lot, but the combat becomes much more tactical and interesting, keeping the game fun for everyone.

In a high optimization game, this kind of thing probably won't fly, but then maybe you shouldn't be trying to kill casters with mundanes in that situation?

[Big Fau]

I would also suggest the Vecna Blooded (MM V) template to become immune to divinations.

Tell me something: Why would the god of magic apply a template, one that is designed to help spellcasters, to a guy trying to kill mages?

[Greenish]

Tell me something: Why would the god of magic apply a template, one that is designed to help spellcasters, to a guy trying to kill mages?For his own nefarious purposes, of course.

[XenoGeno]

Tell me something: Why would the god of magic apply a template, one that is designed to help spellcasters, to a guy trying to kill mages?

God of magic and secrets. The fewer people who know magic there are, the more of a secret it is. Seems to me he'd love to have mage-hunters in his employ.

Now, I'm positive I'm misremembering something, but aren't god-blooded creatures supposed to be beings who have literally bathed in the blood of gods? How does a lich have blood to bathe in?

[KillianHawkeye]

Question:


- Practiced spellcaster feat to offset the -4 CL penalty from the mage slayer feat.

Why do you need this if you haven't got any spellcasting classes? :smallconfused:

[Dusk Eclipse]

Tellflamar Shadow Lord has some minor spellcasting, only 3 levels IIRC, but most of them are at discounted spell level

[TuggyNE]

Now, I'm positive I'm misremembering something, but aren't god-blooded creatures supposed to be beings who have literally bathed in the blood of gods? How does a lich have blood to bathe in?

It's a secret.