Cross-caster prestige classes?

[Lord Sidereal]

Is there much point, from a powergaming point of view, in taking a prestige class, such as cerebremancer (sp) that adds one to two kinds of caster/maifester classes. Would it not be better to invest all your levels in a single caster/manifester class?

[Kalessin]

Well, you do get more spells/powers to cast/manifest. It's like the Mystic Theurge.

[Lord Sidereal]

Aye, but youd get better spells quicker if rather than go wizard 5 / cleric 5 / mystic theurge 10 you just went wizard 20

[Karsh]

The idea behind dual-casting classes is to increase a character's versatility by giving them access to a lot more spells. The problem lies with the delayed caster progression and the fact that you can only cast so many spells in a round.

Most builds that I've seen which are actually effective with Mystic Theurge and the like involve Seeker of the Song, Ur-Priest, Divine Crusader, or some other 10 level PrC that gives 9th level spells.

[Thomas]

From a powergaming point of view, yes, you don't want to be a dual caster. You'll be 1.5 spell levels behind a single-class caster, with no real advantage.

The only advantage dual casters have is in campaigns where the party doesn't get to rest regularly or often enough, and where they have to expend so much spells that they actually run out of them (rare in most campaigns; not very rare in my campaigns...), and even then they're mostly good as secondary casters (i.e. the party already has an arcanist).

My personal favorite six person party is: a tank (paladin, fighter), an archer/secondary melee combatant (ranger, fighter, druid, multiclass), a skillmonkey (rogue), a healer (cleric), an arcanist (wizard), and a dual-caster (cleric/wizard or druid/wizard mystic theurge).

[Fax Celestis]

There's also the infamous double-nines caster: Shadowcaster 3/Wizard 3/Noctumancer 10/Mystic Theurge 4.

[Lord Sidereal]

which books are Shadowcaster & Noctumancer in?

[Fax Celestis]

Shadowcaster and Noctumancer appear in the Tome of Magic, in the Shadow Magic section.

[Merlin the Tuna]

Druid 3/Wizard 3/Arcane Hierophant 10/Mystic Theurge 4 is a nice one, too, even if it is "only" 9th level Druid spells. (Arcane Hierophant is from Races of the Wild, for the record.)

[Jack_Simth]

For the most part, from a powergaming perspective, a single feat is better than most dual-casting PrC's:

Leadership.

Seriously. Your cohort caps off at your level-2 (you will have some need of pushing your Charisma up a bit for this tactic - works best of Sorcerers); you keep your full spellcasting class full, and your cohort is only two caster levels behind you. A Wizard-10 can have a Cleric-8 as a cohort. A Mystic Theurge build at the same level casts as a Wizard-7/Cleric-7 (unless it's cheesed up through various means).

[JaronK]

Unless you're pulling off early entry tricks or rapid progression PrCs, no, it's not worthwhile from a power perspective... having lots of useless spells isn't nearly as good as a few very effective ones. That said:

Wizard 7/Mindbender 1/Ur Priest 1/Mystic Theurge 9/X2 (where X is any arcane advancing PrC) gets you one short of full Wizard casting with full Ur Priest casting. Not too shabby.

Using Earth Sense, Earth Spell, and Heighten Spell at level one (you have to be human with a flaw) lets you cast second level spells with a first level class (heighten a 0 level spell to level 1, Earth Spell makes it level 2). Now you can do this:

Wizard 1/Druid 1/Mystic Theurge 8/Arcane Heirophant 10

Yay. You can't wildshape though, which makes this weaker than a druid for most purposes... but you still cast like a Wizard 19 and a Druid 19, and that's not bad.

However, if you're not trying one of those tricks, it's just not worthwhile.

JaronK

[tarbrush]

Also, it should be noted that there are cheesy ways of getting early access to those classes. An Illumina with improved sigil Krau can cast 2nd level spells with only 1 level of a spellcasting class.

[I_Got_This_Name]

There's also the infamous double-nines caster: Shadowcaster 3/Wizard 3/Noctumancer 10/Mystic Theurge 4.

How do you get to take Theurge levels with this build? I can see how you qualify for Noctumancer, but not Theurge, nor how you get to add to both with Theurge.

[Fax Celestis]

Shadowcasters specifically say that they can qualify for either side of the Mystic Theurge progression under their specifics about qualifying for prestige classes.

[Devils_Advocate]

There are three basic potential problems with dual casters:

(1) Loss of spell levels: The ability to cast a bunch of lower-level spells comes at the cost of the highest-level spells that you could have been able to cast.

(2) Multiple Attribute Dependancy: You need to keep two different casting stats high instead of just one.

(3) Spell redundancy: You have more spell slots per day, but not more actions per round. The number of castings that you can do in a given combat remains the same. You can prepare/know a wide variety of spells, of course, but you start to see diminishing returns -- a full caster with a few scrolls, wands, etc. can cover most of her bases pretty well normally anyway. Twice as many spell slots per day just doesn't usually mean twice as many castings per day -- it more likely means that you have a bunch of unused spells at the end of the day.

How worthwhile it is to play a dual caster, then, depends on the degree to which the above apply. For example, an Artificer//Psion in a Gestalt campaign with many combats per day, in which single casters are likely to run out of spells unless they conserve them, would be quite good because it suffers from none of the above drawbacks. A Wizard/Cleric/Mystic Theurge in a campaign with a more typical number of combats per day, on the other hand, suffers all of the above drawbacks and thus pretty much sucks. Even if you're serving as the sole spellcaster for your group, you'd probably be much better off just going straight Cleric or Archivist or something. Take the Magic domain, get an NPC spellcaster through Leadership or by just hiring one, whatever. There are ways to supplement your own single-class spellcasting without watering it down.

[TheOOB]

For the most part, from a powergaming perspective, a single feat is better than most dual-casting PrC's:

Leadership.

Seriously. Your cohort caps off at your level-2 (you will have some need of pushing your Charisma up a bit for this tactic - works best of Sorcerers); you keep your full spellcasting class full, and your cohort is only two caster levels behind you. A Wizard-10 can have a Cleric-8 as a cohort. A Mystic Theurge build at the same level casts as a Wizard-7/Cleric-7 (unless it's cheesed up through various means).

Mentioning leadership in a thread about builds is like mentioning the deck of many things in a thread about magic items. Leadership isn't a tool for a player to make their characters more powerful, it's a tool for a DM to get the party bigger if need be without having to run an NPC character. Like an artifact you can only get it if the DM explicitly allows it.

Anyways, it is generally a very bad idea to multiclass as a full spellcaster unless it's into a PrC with full casting progression. When you're a full spellcaster your abilities begin and end with your spells, and anything that makes your spells weaker makes you less valuable as a character. Giving up the ability to cast 9th level spells in order to cast multiple types of spells doesn't make you more powerful, or even really more versitile, it just makes you have more abilities that are less powerful. That wouldn't be so bad if you could use both classes spells at the same time, but you can't.

[Ramza00]

There's also the infamous double-nines caster: Shadowcaster 3/Wizard 3/Noctumancer 10/Mystic Theurge 4.


How do you get to take Theurge levels with this build? I can see how you qualify for Noctumancer, but not Theurge, nor how you get to add to both with Theurge.

Actually the build is better than that.

First play the game with 3 lvls of wizard, and take precocious apprentice as your 1st lvl feat. When you get to lvl 4 you multiclass into shadowcaster. Read page 115 of creeping darkness, you can sacrifice a number of arcane lvls(in this case your wizard lvls) and transform them into a shadowcaster. Thus at lvl 4 you are a Wizard 1/Shadowcaster 3.

Precocious Apprentice allows you to cast 2nd lvl arcane spells. Normally though it disqualifies you for mystic theurge and such since once you gain 2nd lvl divine spells you no longer are able to cast your 2nd lvl arcane spell till your lvls advance enough that you can cast 2nd lvl arcane spells normally. Shadowcaster magic isn't spells and thus doesn't affect precocious apprentice. Thus you qualify for at lvl 4 allowing you to take it at lvl 5.

Lvl 1 to lvl 3: Wizard 3
Lvl 4 and after Wizard 1/Shadowmaster 3/Noctumancer 10/Mystic Theurge 6

This trick I relayed above doesn't advance your wizard caster lvl at all, but it does boost your shadow magic lvl known by 2 lvls, and it allows you entry into the prc 2 lvls earlier.

[Ramza00]

Shadowcasters specifically say that they can qualify for either side of the Mystic Theurge progression under their specifics about qualifying for prestige classes.
I am adding the page number, page 117 left column for I had to look for it again, I remember reading it when I first got TOM but its been a long time and there is alot of text. Thanks Fax though

[Rumda]

and then there the warlock cross-caster classes in complete mage eldrich Theurge and eldrich disciple

[Ramza00]

X 1/Ardent 4/Ur Priest 2/Psychic Theurge 10/Ardent 3

is another goody. Ardent doesn't loose any ability to cast its highest powers if you take practiced manifester, due to its ability to learn any power that its able to manifest the power points for (which practice manifester increases up to your hd). Thus an ardent just loses 3 lvls of power points for which its behind. Make sure to take another lvl of ardent after psychic theurge so you can assume another mantle.

X is for the 6 ranks in bluff which Ardent doesn't have as a class skill. If you can get the DM to adapt mindbender to psionics as recommended in the mindbender adaptation, the build changes to Ardent 5/Mindbender 1/Ur Priest 2/Psychic Theurge 10/Ardent 2

Finally Ardent and Ur Priest are both based off wisdom, and they make logical sense why one would also multiclass into the other.

[Ramza00]

Druid 3/Wizard 3/Arcane Hierophant 10/Mystic Theurge 4 is a nice one, too, even if it is "only" 9th level Druid spells. (Arcane Hierophant is from Races of the Wild, for the record.)
You also get 9th lvl wizard spells at lvl 20. You don't get 9th lvl arcane spells if you pick sorcerer though.

[Merlin the Tuna]

You also get 9th lvl wizard spells at lvl 20. You don't get 9th lvl arcane spells if you pick sorcerer though.Ah, well, I figured a person could pick up on that. I said ' "only" 9th level Druid spells ' since the Druid list is generally considered a wee bit weaker than the Cleric's list, and Cleric/Wizard is the standard issue Theurge.

[Thomas]

Druid 3/Wizard 3/Arcane Hierophant 10/Mystic Theurge 4 is a nice one, too, even if it is "only" 9th level Druid spells. (Arcane Hierophant is from Races of the Wild, for the record.)

The really twisted thing is that unlike the other dual-caster classes, Arcane Hierophant gives you special abilities at almost every level. Ignore spell failure for druid armor, familiar-companion, and some unique abilities...

As if druids needed another advantage only they have.

[Fax Celestis]

The really twisted thing is that unlike the other dual-caster classes, Arcane Hierophant gives you special abilities at almost every level. Ignore spell failure for druid armor, familiar-companion, and some unique abilities...

As if druids needed another advantage only they have.

The Shd/Wiz/Noc/MTh combo gets 'em too. Half of Noctumancer is countermagic abilites.

[Ramza00]

Ah, well, I figured a person could pick up on that. I said ' "only" 9th level Druid spells ' since the Druid list is generally considered a wee bit weaker than the Cleric's list, and Cleric/Wizard is the standard issue Theurge.
A druid list is only weaker the more supplemental books you add (Cleric's get better supplement spells). In core the druid's list is actually better than the cleric's.

Regardless, 9th lvl wizard, 9th lvl druid, and wildshape up to 13th lvl (good for medium lvls till your spells catch up) is nothing to roll your eyes at.