Need help building battlefield control in low magic campagin

[Hobbo Jim]

I am about to enter a low magic campaign, and of course being a glutton for punishment I want to play a caster. It's kind of odd rules, but he has told me that casters will be 1/2 starting level and receiving 1/2 exp. He has also told me that health is being changed for all classes, and that most people will only be able to take 2-3 hits regardless of who it is (not sure how he's balancing that). Regardless, I think I want to create a battlefield control caster, but this will be the first time that I've done that. What kind of class should I run? The only content denied is book of nine swords; all others are available including dragon magazine. Any ideas on what build I should go if I'm going to be behind in level?

EDIT: Modern day campaign, no magic items, starting at level 5 (so level 3 for casters)

[Gildedragon]

Ooof, this is harsh.
So you're gonna be limited in spell slots: Alchemical and Poison effects will be something you might want to look into.

items such as:

Liquid Smoke
Eggshell Grenades
Noxious Smokesticks
Sleep Smoke
are your line of sight obstructions, with the last two having additional effects

Liquid Ice or Freeze Powder are slippery surfaces (marbles are useful for this too)

Alchemical Fire and its ilk (acid, frost...) are great for blasting

Tanglefoot Bags!
Lots of these

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Dragonborn Warforged Psion (Shaper), it's technically not a spellcaster so it shouldn't suffer the half xp penalty. You keep your original type and subtype as a Dragonborn, so you'll still have all the Living Construct traits. Your natural slam attack is a physical trait, so as long as you still have fists you'll still have that despite being Dragonborn. Get the heart aspect from Dragonborn for a breath attack, take two flaws for two extra feats, get Adamantine Body, Entangling Exhalation, Azure Talent, and your Psion 1 bonus feat is Psicrystal Affinity (Nimble). Your 3rd level feat should be Craft Universal Item, which allows you to make psionic wondrous items and rings (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/universalItems.htm#ringofSelfSufficiency). Make a Ring of Protection +1 and at 6th level take Item Familiar (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/itemFamiliars.htm). Your Psion 5 bonus feat should be Midnight Augmentation, you're going to use this with Bestow Power so it only costs 1 additional powerpoint for it to bestow an extra 2 powerpoints, so at 6th level you can spend 5 powerpoints to give yourself 6 powerpoints, and you'll be able to refill your powerpoints between encounters.

Keep Share Pain active on your Psicrystal so you'll take half damage from all sources. Keep it in a compartment on your person so opponents never have line of sight/effect to it and cannot target it directly or hit it with area effects. The psicrystal's Hardness 8 reduces every instance of damage it takes from Share Pain by that much, regardless of the original attack's type. You can share beneficial powers you use on yourself with your psicrystal, such as Psionic Repair Damage and Vigor. You can give the psicrystal a Healing Belt and it can use that to heal you during combat when needed.

Get Psionic Minor Creation and cover yourself in Black Lotus Extract, you'll deliver a dose of it when you make a slam attack or when an opponent hits you with a natural weapon, grapples you, or otherwise touches your character. Here's a good Psion handbook (http://www.brilliantgameologists.com/boards/?topic=10238.0), and keep in mind that you can use your Entanglign Exhalation breath attack every 1d4 rounds.

[sideswipe]

try and persuade your DM that instead of being a lower level, only allow half of your class levels are allowed to be casting levels.

or that the campaign is gestalt but any level you take a casting class it takes up both sides of the gestalt.
note - any class that gets half casting like a paladin instead can either take up both sides in a level they gain casting or to ignore the whole gaining of spells and take up one side.

[ahenobarbi]

I recommend grey elf generalist wizard, using domain wizard (conjuration domain) and eleven generalist. This will give you some extra spell slots (and it will be an issue as you'll be far behind in level). I also highly recommend Cloudy Conjuration feat - it will let you use your low level spells as minor debuffs and battlefield control (note that you can use it with 0 level conjuration spells).

I wouldn't bother with summons - they will probably be too weak to matter.

Do you know in what level range will the game be? If you don't think it'll go above level 11 (so 5 for you) you shouldn't bother with entering PrCs. If you think it'll go above that... you probably will need something to boost your survivability. Incantantrix persisting spells and Initiate of Sevenfold Veil are great for that.

[Captnq]

Alchemy and poisons.

Go to my sig, get the EVD.
Combat Equipment section.
Look at Weapons-Shields and key word search for ammunition. Techincally because of the Gnome Calculus, all alchemy flasks are ammunition, so I included everything in there.

The poison section is good to look at as well.

Get flaws. MANY FLAWS. Burn the flaws on feats.
Get Collegiate Wizard. Maybe Skincaster. Techincally, skincaster gives you an infinite number of pages of spells, as long as you tattoo them on your skin.

I'm almost done with the spellbook handbook, keep an eye out for that in a week or so.

Conjurer specialist. Take rapid Summoning for your familiar. Or Abrupt jaunt. Both are good, but rapid summoning is better for a battlefield controller. Be a focused specialist so you have 3 conjuration spells a day. Give up Enchantment, Necromancy, and Evocation. Get buku illusion/transmutation spells to suppliment your conjuration.

Never expect you ever advance a level. Extra power NOW is better then anything later.

At 5th level take spontaneous diviner. Never advance beyond 5th level as a wizard. PrC for 6th and never look back.

Consider keeping the familiar and take improved familiar. Buff the crap out of that muther.

If your DM allows you to do so, take a level of Cloister Cleric at level 2, blow all three domains for domain feats.
Be a follower of Amaunator. Take Initiate of Amauntor. You can now spontaneously cast any fire spell on either the wizard or cleric spell list WITHOUT it being in your spellbook AND if it's a prohibited school.

Never expect to find a wizard to trade spells with you, EVER. Focus on getting all the spells you need without help.

Otherwise, wander about the EVD and look for ideas that jump out at you.

[ahenobarbi]

Conjurer specialist. Take rapid Summoning for your familiar. Or Abrupt jaunt. Both are good, but rapid summoning is better for a battlefield controller. Be a focused specialist so you have 3 conjuration spells a day. Give up Enchantment, Necromancy, and Evocation. Get buku illusion/transmutation spells to suppliment your conjuration.

Elven generalist + domain wizard is much better than conjurer. You get more spell slots and you don't give up any schools.

Abrupt Jaunt might be worth it (it's great defense) but in my opinion familiar is better (especially if you can get +8 to initiative with familiar and elven wizard substitution level).

Rapid summoning won't be worth much because summons will be very weak because of low level.


At 5th level take spontaneous diviner. Never advance beyond 5th level as a wizard.

Not necessarily true - there are some other good ACFs (domain granted power) and if you don't expect to go significantly beyond level 5 it's probably not worth being weaker for almost all game by preparing to enter a PrC.


Consider keeping the familiar and take improved familiar. Buff the crap out of that muther.

Again familiar granting +8 to initiative is probably better than most improved familiars (unless you can get Mirror Mephit which gets simulacrum once a day...).



If your DM allows you to do so, take a level of Cloister Cleric at level 2, blow all three domains for domain feats.
Be a follower of Amaunator. Take Initiate of Amauntor. You can now spontaneously cast any fire spell on either the wizard or cleric spell list WITHOUT it being in your spellbook AND if it's a prohibited school.

I don't think that's a good idea. Since the character will be far behind in level sacrificing even one level of spell casting progression is much bigger deal than usually.

[ahenobarbi]

Get flaws. MANY FLAWS. Burn the flaws on feats.
Get Collegiate Wizard. Maybe Skincaster. Techincally, skincaster gives you an infinite number of pages of spells, as long as you tattoo them on your skin.

That is an excellent advice BTW. Collegiate wizard will be great as it's very likely that you will not find any spells.

I'd also consider Edietic Spellcaster from dragon magazine to avoid having your spellbook taken away.

[Hobbo Jim]

Thanks everyone for the help! Getting some awesome responses. A couple other things I should mention though... It will be based in modern times (Phoenix, Arizona to be exact), and so other races will most definitely be less common so human will probably be best, however he did say I could backstory in a different race. I will also do my best to create flaws, however the DM usually demands that flaws be somehow related to whatever feat I take, for example if I wanted power attack some sort of flaw regarding being overaggressive would work (he also allows us to make our own flaws if we run them by him). Another thing to think about: there will be few to no magic items in this campaign, and players will almost definitely be incapable of creating them at any point in time. It is also a pretty good assumption that I will not find anyone to trade spells with unless I somehow manage to kill an evil wizard and then decipher his spell book.

On another note, some more things about this DM. From what I gather he never intends to increase the starting level should a player die, which will be 5 (I think I've convinced him to let me start at level 3). The idea is that everyone is able to kill everyone, but some people will have clearly survived longer. So should I survive, I might actually be able to gain levels :D Still though, I think I agree that power now is better than planning for power later.

The fire thing sound really cool, but I don't know how it will work for the kind of character that I want, which is supposed to be an almost pure utility caster.

[Gavinfoxx]

Read all pages of this:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?325933-Easy-Bake-Wizard-Handbook/

You probably don't want to be an elf, likely human and maybe get focused specialist conjurer with abrupt jaunt. For the 'anyone can die' campaigns, having a 'LOL, no' button is SUPER userful!

Also figure out exactly what stats he is using for guns, there are a LOT of possible differences.

[Gildedragon]

Hmmm Lvl 3 spellcaster...
Unless you want to do some Elven Generalist Domain Wizard bootstrapping shennanigans... You really don't have much gunning for you. 2nd level spells... and not very many of then

[Kuulvheysoon]

I'm going to step away from the crowd here and suggest the Dragonfire Adept. With the Entangling Exhalation feat, you can tie your foes down and, provided you snag the correct 1st level invocation, breath every round with no fear of hurting your allies.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Thanks everyone for the help! Getting some awesome responses. A couple other things I should mention though... It will be based in modern times (Phoenix, Arizona to be exact), and so other races will most definitely be less common so human will probably be best, however he did say I could backstory in a different race. I will also do my best to create flaws, however the DM usually demands that flaws be somehow related to whatever feat I take, for example if I wanted power attack some sort of flaw regarding being overaggressive would work (he also allows us to make our own flaws if we run them by him). Another thing to think about: there will be few to no magic items in this campaign, and players will almost definitely be incapable of creating them at any point in time. It is also a pretty good assumption that I will not find anyone to trade spells with unless I somehow manage to kill an evil wizard and then decipher his spell book.

On another note, some more things about this DM. From what I gather he never intends to increase the starting level should a player die, which will be 5 (I think I've convinced him to let me start at level 3). The idea is that everyone is able to kill everyone, but some people will have clearly survived longer. So should I survive, I might actually be able to gain levels :D Still though, I think I agree that power now is better than planning for power later.

The fire thing sound really cool, but I don't know how it will work for the kind of character that I want, which is supposed to be an almost pure utility caster.

Why are you using D&D rules for this, then? Something like d20 Modern or even World of Darkness would work better mechanically within the arbitrary limitations he's placed on the game.

With those limitations, I wouldn't even bother playing a spellcaster at all. Make a former police officer who was one of the top guys on the SWAT team, but after a severe knee injury he has to wear a brace. He retired on a significant injury/disability pension, and became a hunter of sharks and exotic marine life, since his leg injury doesn't inhibit his ability to swim. He uses (and has access and permits to obtain more) harpoon guns, net launchers, pepper sprays, tear gas, smoke and flash grenades as well as shrapnel and incendiary grenades, automatic weapons and any type of firearm imaginable, tasers, shotgun taser shells, plus poisons, especially those obtained from exotic marine life, as well as a variety of delivery systems for those, and kevlar body armor. He drives a bulletproof 4wd Yukon XL Danali with dark tinted windows and handicapped plates. Basically everything any given internet tough guy has boasted, this guy has access to and can do, except run. You should get a pretty good idea of what this guy does. Nets, pepper sprays, flash grenades, and tasers if he doesn't want to kill/maim them, or the above plus harpoons, poisons, and good old fashioned shootin' for anyone else.

Here are a few ideas for flaws:
Hero Cop: The media briefly picked up on a heroic act during your distinguished service in the police force, and your face is known as that of an officer of the law. Criminals and low-life scum may recognize you as a cop, which could mean trouble in certain company.

Dirty Cop: Your time spent in law enforcement was far from spotless, and you were unlucky enough for it to be made public knowledge. Police and law enforcement will not openly associate with you, and honest cops will never trust you or give you preferential treatment.

Slow (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/buildingCharacters/characterFlaws.htm#slow): Your base land speed is halved (round down to the nearest 5-foot interval). You can wear a leg brace to gain +5 ft. land speed, but that does not stack with any other bonuses to your base land speed.

Diabetic: You are diabetic, and must have regular doses of insulin.

Bravado (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?258440-The-quot-Best-quot-Flaws#30): You cannot benefit from dodge bonuses to AC, and you cannot use the withdraw action in combat.