A gestalt Warmage that reaaaaally likes fire... A lot... Like, it's creepy...

[ArqArturo]

I'm playing a gestalt Raptoran Warmage/Paladin, and we just reached level 7, so I'm seriously thinking into taking Silver Pyromancer, since I have all the requirements. However, the build I currently have is not great, so the DM has allowed me to re-make the build.

The stats were rolled and are as followed: 12, 15, 15, 18, 17, 16. So, as I want to organize them is:

Str 16
Dex 12
Con 17
Int 15
Wis 15
Cha 18

Feat selection so far:
1.- Smiting Spell
3.- Energy Substitution (Fire)
6.- Arcane Strike

First of, I'm a blaster first, tank (of sorts second) second, but I am in the frontline a bit more than usual. Not all of the party is gestalt, however. Those that are is me and a half-orc Barbarian/Paladin of freedom that will take a few levels in Champion of Gwynharwiff. The rest of the party is a Dream Dwarf shugenja (earth) with some levels in rogue (wants to take the Earth Dreamer Prc), a ghostwise halfling Druid that focuses on summoning and using his animal companion (A fleshraker Dinosaur), an Illumian cleric of Thor (his domains are Weather and War), and a Grey Elf Wizard (Generalist racial substitution but only level 1, and refuses to take a PrC, says they're 'too broken').

The thing is, I know the Silver Pyromancer can make fire-based spells into divine energy, this brings the interesting thing that the Elemental Savant makes all damage into fire damage. I never really liked the idea of the Savant because it limits all your spells into fire, but the combo is nice. So, should I risk and get the Savant, or just screw it, and focus on another PrC, once I'm done with the Pyromancer (I like Paragnostic Apostle).

[DMVerdandi]

I wouldn't even play around with paladin.

Instead, Cleric with Dynamic priest feat so you can be SAD with CHA.
Take the Spontaneous Domain Alternative Class Feature and choose fire domain. Now you are a cleric of fire, You worship fire, you are the fire.

Take Searing Spell(Ignores fire resistance up to half)
Smiting Spell
And extend spell.

Honestly... I would just go straight CADzilla. Cleric//Druid Straight up. Between druid and cleric, there are tons of fire spells, Some other untyped buffs for utility, and then you have two of the largest lists at your hands. Druids get to become fire elementals later on, as well as dragons.
The only problem between the two of them is reliance on one feat list, which is kind of...super tight.
But if you are okay with most of what is going on you will be fine.


Druid also has a lot of wind spells, and wind potentiates fire. Also works with the whole Raptoran thing, so you could really play it up quite a bit.

[Vaz]

This (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/3962696)may prove useful. It's not a Warmage, but similar applies here, although unlike a Sorcerer, the spell selection is not as varied for you, neither do you add the Paladin spells to Warmages "knows all" list - it's called out specifically. While optimizing Orb of Fire, it doesn't apply to the Warmage however - it has

The notable thing about a Paladin is three things in my mind - immunity to Daze and Stun from Favour of the Martyr, Sword of the Arcane Order, and Battle Blessing.

The Favour of the Martyr spell provides a ton of immunities that are otherwise quite hard to get a hold of - Daze, especially for Celerity, and Stun, which helps with Reserves of Strength (its real benefit is bypassing its dice cap on spells, although the stun clause is easily rectified thanks to lay on hands).

In regards to Sword of the Arcane Order, it's fairly setting specific to Faerun. However, Eberron tends to be a bit carefree about such stuff, and changing the "Mystic Fire Knight" to "Silver Flame Knight" isn't a massive shift. Sword of the Arcane Order lets you cast Celerity.

Battle Blessing makes your Paladin spells swift actions - by which you can get additional ones from Ruby Knight Vindicator (although there is contention about what action it takes for Divine Impetus to use, I fall in the "whatever your DM says", honestly). However, RKV, requires the blessing of Wee Jas in the fluff, but the crunch isn't really married to it, and IIRC, the adaptation section encourages converting it to other gods - changing the Devoted Spirit requirement to Desert Wind would be pretty thematic.

While we're on the notation of Flame Spells, a Jade Phoenix Mage would round it off quite well thematically. Remember that you cannot have two PrC's at the same time with Gestalt (it's heavily discouraged, although I sometimes handwave away, as ever with Gestalt, YMMV).

As a Spontaneous Caster, and knowing all spells on your Spell-list automatically, Versatile Spellcaster gives you early access. This is the only combination which lets you have both Silver Pyromancer and Jade Phoenix Mage on the same build. In total, you lose 3 levels of casting, there which is unfortunate, but the way around that is to take a level of Warmage on the other "side" of the build on the levels where the Prestige Classes do not advance it - after all, you cannot have two PrC's at the same time, so there is no loss there.

Warmage 5/Silver Pyromancer 5/Jade Phoenix Mage 10//Paladin 4/[Initiator] 1/Warmage +1/Paladin +4/Warmage +1/Paladin +4/Warmage +1/Paladin +4
- Versatile Spellcaster
- Reserves of Strength
- Battle Blessing
- Sword of the Arcane Order
- 3-4 Free Feats

This gives you an effective Warmage casting level of 20, with the class abilities of an 8th level Warmage (so Armoured Warmage; Medium), 16th level Paladin abilities (so check out some ACF's (http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1151316) for it; Curse Breaker, alternative animal companions (pg 204, DMG), Planar Paladin (except 4th level), etc etc). You have the ability to choose an Initiator class - at ECL5, you have an effective initiator level of 3, and at ECL15 for JPM, you have an effective Initiator level of 10, so planning ahead which stance you desire (when you're not in your JPM exclusive stances) goes along way. You can only select Devoted Spirit or Desert Wind, however, so obviously, Crusader or Swordsage are best here. You do have the feats for a reasonably effective chain gun tripper, so Thicket of Blades can work, especially if you boost your Dexterity somewhat.

If your DM doesn't approve of Versatile Spellcaster early qualification, then getting Zhentarim Skymage could be a decent way to use your high charisma to get a firey mount - with 34 Charisma (18+5 leveling, +5 tome, +6 item) that's 23 HD worth of flying creature as a pet - in other words, Adult Red or Gold or, Mature Adult Brass Dragons. Adult Gold Dragons being the most powerful, the luck bonus being especially nice. Zhentarim could easily be represented as the Silver Flames elite guards in Eberron - Sword of the Arcane Order helps qualify here by ECL14.

[Chambers]

I wouldn't even play around with paladin.

It looks like the party is using the Partial Gestalt suggestion from the Tier System. The other non-gestalt characters are all Tier 1's and 2's while the other Gestalt character is a Tier 4//5. So if they are using that system the PC wouldn't be able to be gestalt if the OP switched to Cleric instead of Paladin.

Warmage // Paladin isn't a bad deal. Cha drives Spellcasting and Saves and being able to cast in decent armor mitigates (somewhat) the Warmage not having buff spells like Mage Armor, Shield, etc.

Elemental Savant's huge downside is nicely turned around by the Silver Pyromancer, so I think it's a good idea. Elemental Savant gets a few defensive benefits to help out a little more with your non-utility spell list (Resistance, Darkvision, some immunities and a great capstone). The question becomes do you want the capstone of Silver Pyromancer or Elemental Savant, because you can't have both before epic levels (early entry tricks not withstanding).

I'd go with the Silver Pyromancer capstone, simply because it comes online 5 levels in instead of 10.

Warmage 6 / Silver Pyromancer 5 / Elemental Savant 9
//
Paladin 6 / Fighter 14

I put Fighter in there because there's not much incentive to stick around much longer in Paladin. The few Paladin spells you'll get won't contribute that much when there's a Shugenja, Cleric, and Druid in party as well, while the Fighter bonus feats will help shore up your position in the front line.

Feats would be something like: 1 - Battle Caster, 3 - Energy Substitution (Fire), 6 - Power Attack, 9 - Divine Defiance, 12 - Arcane Strike, 15 - Extra Turning, 18 - Divine Shield

Though you don't have Dispel Magic for Divine Defiance you do have just about all the common blasting spells that enemies might use, so you could still counter them. Unfortunately Divine Defiance has a requirement of Divine Caster level 3 which is why Paladin goes to 6th. If you don't care about Divine Defiance or don't want to take more than 4 levels of Paladin then drop the feat.

[ArqArturo]

Well, the thing with the Silver Pyromancer is that you add the paladin spells to the list. Thus, Revenance is available, as well as dispel magic/dispel evil too, for example.

And sadly I can't change gestalt classes, mostly because the DM has the retraining rule of 'if you used it in game, it cannot be retrained' thing with classes/feats, so I'm kind of stuck with paladin. Not a bad trade off, honestly, since it lets me be a bit more useful on both accounts: Warmage has some frontline spells you can use, and the paladin lets me be a beefier caster. All in all, I'm a gish, in all accounts.

The fighter classes... Would that be multiclassing? If so, that would be... But yeah, it might work.

[Vaz]

You don't add Paladin spells to Warmage. It explicitly says you cannot do it with Warmage.

[ArqArturo]

Crap on a sitck, you're right :/. I asked the dn on this and said 'sorry'. Guess I'll keep looking on other stuff to add sone spells... Maybe the paragnostic apostle?.

[Vaz]

Did you see my post before? It includes a link to Sorcerer build which utilizes Silver Pyromancer which you can use. Alternatively my post contains a couple of ways to use both Warmage and Paladin.

[ArqArturo]

Yup, looking at it now (wasn't working earlier, for some reason O.o), and it looks fairly interesting, but I'll see if the DM lets me switch from warmage to sorcerer. The only problem is that we're not using Tome of Battle.

Sorcerer was actually my first choice, as I was thinking of making a more martial-version of a frost mage (http://youtu.be/moSFlvxnbgk). As it stands, my gestalt character is just a martial pyromancer :p.

[ArqArturo]

Well, the DM got the Tome of battle, so I might look at the options more keenly.