20th Archmage Build... Advice and assistance?

[Thillidan]

Name: Teoryn, Archmage.
Race: Whisper Gnome [Races of Stone]
Classes: Transmuter 5th, Mage of the Arcane Order 7th, Geometer 2nd, Master specialist 1st, Archmage 5th.
Attributes: STR 6, DEX 14, CON 16, INT 28, WIS 14, CHA 8.
HP: 124
AC: 21. Touch: 13 Flat-Footed: 19
All 5 attribute points went into INT, and Used a Tome of the Clear mind +5

Feats:
Spell Focus (trans)
Scribe Scroll
Spell Mastery (some spells)
Uncanny Forethought [Ex.o'Ev] <- This breaks my character. See below
Metamagic school Focus (trans.)
Skill Focus (spellcraft) <------ Archmage Entry
Spell Penatration (+2)

- Metamagic Feats:
Enlarge Spell
Extend Spell
Cooperative Spell <------- MoAO entry.


IMPORTANT PARTS:

Book of Geometry (Ex): At 2nd level and higher, a geometer uses a unique system for recording the details of a spell that drastically reduces the expense of maintaining spellbooks. Every spell he learns from now on requires only a single page in his spellbook.

Uncanny Forethought [Ex.o'Ev]
Important bit:
"Alternatively, as a full-round action, you can use a reserved slot to cast any spell that you know. The spell is resolved as normal, but for the purpose of the spell, your caster level is reduced by two. The level of the slot used must be equal to or greater than the level of the spell you intend to cast."

Conclusion:
So... as A Geometer, I have the ability to fill my Boccob's Blessed Book's 1000pages, with 1000 spells...
Boccob's Blessed book states it doesnt cost Gold to scribe spells into it... So, as long as I spend a day to scribe the spell, I have the spell.
With a full round action, I can cast any of those spells [of the spell slot].

With Guild member from MoAO, I can simply "trade" spells with my fellow Guild-members. So I don't pay to learn spells [My DM has agreed that the last sentence of the Guild member description allows this.]

We are yet to confirm if there is OFFICIAL Errata for Uncanny Forethought, because a lot of game-breakers claim that you can cast any spell, regardless of cast time, as a full round action. Because if you couldn't it WOULD state that, as they usually do.
We are not using this ruling, but as it stands, no Errata has been found.



MOST IMPORTANT THING:
I don't want people's opinion of "Ruling Uncanny Forethought that way would be F***ing Retarded!" YES! We are aware of that. Find me OFFICIAL Errata and I will agree that it cannot be ruled that way.
I don't want people saying "But you can't learn spells by trading yours with guild members. That's dumb" Because, as it states that the Arcane Order is like a university. And university students in similar majors trade notes all the time, and often work together on assignments. As a university student studying Physics and Chemistry, I WOULD know; and regardless its my DM's call. He thinks its more logical than saying that's NOT allowed.

LASTLY, I don't want to hear; Those prestiges are unbalanced, whisper gnomes should have a level adjustment. Why can you have used those magic items, or why would the DM give you access to them, knowing how it would affect your character?
The answer is, "You don't tell a fighter he cannot have a +3 Magic weapon, because it would increase his effectiveness... Boccob's Blessed book is 12,500gp... LESS than a +3 weapon. It's only logical that an Archmage of the largest college in the setting might have one."
"Whisper gnome is not unbalanced. It's abilitys are fair, since it has nothing like Immunity to sleep or charm. It jsut has some nice skill bonuses, and its attribute modifier is neutral (with two positives and two negatives)"
"My prestiges are from 2 Complete. Books and the standard DMG... The most commonly allowed books for classes and PrCs."

Please let me know what you think about the abilities, and if anything should be swapped out for effectiveness.
Note: I'm not a fan of Meta-magic. People make it out to be better than it really is. and Ancantatrix (however that Overrated class' name is spelt) is not as amazing as Not having to prepare spells, because your natural INT is too high.
Remember, Headband of Intellect +6 gives me a modifier of +12... Thats 12 unreadied spell slots for Uncanny Forethought and 12 spell levels for Spellpool III.

[Zanos]

Incantatrix is great because it's 3rd level ability lets you apply metamagic effects to spells retroactively to spells already cast with a spellcraft check that can be made trivial, let you doing things like persist every spell on yourself, rendering your stats so high that you're functionally immortal, or persisting stuff like stacking metamagic effects on spells like cloud of knives, letting you throw a dagger every round as a free action that drains a level and sickens the target, etc.

Archmage requires Spell Focus in two different schools.

But yeah, Uncanny Forethought is assume, since it effectively gives you int mod spontaneous casts per day as a wizard. I like combining it with practiced spellcaster to reduce the caster level penalty. It seems a bit redundant with the MotAO spellpool ability, though. I also prefer Grey Elf Generalist Domain Wizards to specialists. Not really sure what advice you're looking for here. It's a solid caster build. Should be effective as long as you know what spells to cast.

[defiantdan]

What sources are you allowed? are you trying to hit a higher ceiling? You have a very solid build. I wouldn't consider them broken. You could replace your wizard bonus feats with fighter ones. Improved Initiative and Mounted Combat(for phantom Steed) are good ones. Other Feats that could boost your power are Item Familiar, Miser with Magic, Spell Swap, Least Legacy(on your item Familiar), lesser Legacy, and greater Legacy. To break your wizard you would need to use broken prestige classes. Incantatrix, Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil, Tainted Scholar, Metaphysical Spellshaper, ect...

Edit: I would swap enlarge spell with sculpt spell, that or buy a rod of it. Also Incantatrix is hardly overrated. it's a staple of the Mailman build and can bust up campaigns by providing 24 hour buffs on things like Wraithstrike. You can snatch spells from other casters and to top it off you only have to fit 3 levels into your build to abuse it. So I don't care how many spells you have prepared X10/Incant 3/Iot7v 7 is easily going to mess up your day and anyone elses that isn't punpun.

[Tvtyrant]

I would grab the feat Practiced Spellcaster, which allows you to cast from reserved slots without taking a caster level hit. I like Mage of the Arcane Order and Geometer on your build, but specializing is already brutal and Master Specialist is very detrimental. Especially to your build, which aims to be a Sorcerer who knows 100+ spells.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

You're one Spell Focus feat short of qualifying for Archmage. Any arcane spellcaster who meets the skill and spell prerequisites of Archmage could go around calling himself an Archmage without taking even a single level of that class. In-character nobody would have any way of knowing that there's no mechanical representation of that class on your character sheet, since metagame concepts such as character classes and levels don't exist in-character and never will.


There are plenty of ways to not have to prepare your spells ahead of time as a Wizard:

Any arcane spellcaster can use the Ancestral Relic Runestaff (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?267805-Sorcerer-Handbook#4) trick to have a fairly large list of spells they can spontaneously cast. It has a greater impact on classes that have a limited number of spells known, but it's still useful for giving a Wizard spontaneous access to choice spells. You can even put non-Wizard spells on it, make a UMD check each day when you attune to it to emulate the class spell list of whatever other spells it contains, and you'll be able to cast those just like any other spells on the Runestaff.

Shadowcraft Mage allows you to spontaneously convert prepared spells into shadow illusions to cast offensive spells that are >100% real. This allows you to spend your prepared spells on situational and utility spells, and turn them into shadow illusions on the fly.

A Beguiler/Wizard/Ultimate Magus gets 19/20 Wizard casting and Versatile Spellcaster allows him to spend Beguiler spell slots two at a time to spontaneously cast any Wizard spell he knows of up to 5th level. Plus your caster level is going to be four higher than your character level, or if you dip Spellthief for 18/20 Wizard casting your caster level will be in the thirties. Plus you can get Able Learner and have all those Beguiler class skills for your entire career.

Any character can take the feat Magical Training to get a spellbook into which they've copied a few spells and the ability to cast a few 0-level spells from it. Per the Rules Compendium, this enables you to add more spells to your spellbook the same way a Wizard does. Anyone can put the same 1st level spell on every page of their spellbook, then cast Secret Page (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/secretPage.htm) to turn one of those into a different spell of any level, and it will still occupy only a single page. This can even be done with the Blessed Book, so you don't need Wizard levels to have a spellbook and you don't need Geometer to make each one occupy a single page. Anyone who spontaneously casts spells (Sorcerer, Beguiler, Warmage, Favored Soul, Spirit Shaman, etc.) can take Versatile Spellcaster from Races of the Dragon and spend their spontaneous slots to fuel that feat and cast any of those spells they have in that spellbook. So that gets spells known like a Wizard has on a spontaneous casting class.

There are item sets in MIC that give you the ability to cast specific spells, namely the Raiment of the Four and the Seven Veils.


The reason Incantatrix is good is because it allows you to add Persistent Spell to your buffs after you've cast them by making a Spellcraft check. You can take ten on that check, and it's fairly easy to get your bonus high enough to succeed in persisting every spell level you can cast. Buffs like Shield, Ray Deflection, Draconic Polymorph/Shapechange, Superior Invisibility, Foresight, Selective Spell Antimagic Field, Magic Circle Against Evil, Dragonsight, Fell Drain/Frighten Death Armor and Fire Shield twice, Fell Drain/Frighten Cloud of Knives a few dozen times, Fell Drain/Frighten Thunderlance, Dimension Jumper, Arcane Spellsurge, etc. It basically enables you to make your character invulnerable, on top of having all-day offensive options so you can harm opponents without spending any additional spells (and automatically harming them if they ever manage to hit you). You can even persist touch-range spells with Arcane Reach from Archmage. Best of all, it only takes three levels in the class to get the class feature that does this!


It's clear what gimmicks you've given this character, but what do you want this character to actually do? Your Transmutation specialty suggests that you intend to be a buffer/debuffer, but you don't have any of the tools that increase your DCs for debuffing to be reliable, and it becomes less useful at this level anyway. It looks like you expect to just be a wizard and you expect everything to fall into place for you because of that. Maybe your group has the patience to sit around while you flip through your 1,000 spells looking for the right one for the current situation, but generally just being well prepared and having a few spontaneous spell options is more than sufficient for a high level character. You're sort of overdoing the spontaneous gimmick, I'd consider the Mage of the Arcane Order levels unnecessary. As I said earlier, you don't need to have a prestige class written on your character sheet to claim to be that in-character, you could have joined the guild, paid your dues for a few months, traded a thousand spells with other members, and then bailed out without ever picking up the class or even spending any feats on its prerequisites. Plenty of characters fulfill the special prerequisites of a prestige class several levels before they fully qualify for it, so you could have just fallen out of good standing before taking Cooperative Spell and never went back, maybe the guild life just wasn't for him.


A few suggestions:
Get rid of Spell Penetration, and pick up a Wand of Assay Spell Resistance (SC). It's expensive, but the Rules Compendium has clarified that spell trigger and spell completion items (wands, staffs, scrolls) take the same action to activate as the spell's casting time, so it's still a swift action to use, and it lasts multiple rounds.

Get a weapon that needs masterwork purchased multiple times, such as a double weapon, ideally you'll want an Elvencraft (Composite) Longbow in RotW, which counts as a quarterstaff and a bow. It needs masterwork three times, so you should be able to put three wand chambers from Dungeonscape in it. as long as you're holding that item, you're counted as holding all three wands it contains. Wands of spells like Nerveskitter, Assay Spell Resistance, and maybe Summon Component in CM are good to always have at the ready just in case you need them. That item, being a quarterstaff, can also be made into a custom Runestaff per the above trick I mentioned.

The above weapon counts as multiple different weapons for purposes of upgrade costs. Each of the three portions of it should be +1 Defending, each can have Spellblade added separately and keyed to a different targeted spell, and you can spread around various +X cost enchantments so no one portion costs a huge amount. Good choices include Eager, Warning, and Parrying. You can put Greater Magic Weapon +5 on each of those, and add +15 to your AC every round from Defending, which explicitly stacks with all other AC bonuses, including other Defending bonuses.

Metamagic rods are amazing, but keep in mind that using them with your spontaneously cast spells will take extra long to cast. A Circlet of Rapid Casting in MIC is a lot cheaper than a Lesser Rod of Quicken, and you can add an Enhancement bonus to Int onto it for the same price as a Headband of Int of the same bonus per MIC p234.

Figure out what you want the character to do, other than overdoing spontaneously casting spells as a Wizard, and put a bit more focus toward that. If you're going to be buffing your party like a good transmuter, get more feats and class feature to make you better/more efficient at that. If you're going to be debuffing opponents like a good transmuter, get more feats and class features to increase your DCs, just look over the save bonuses of CR 20 Outsiders and Dragons to get an idea of where you need to be. Your current build is more designed to do more things than it is to be good at what things it does, focus more on making your character good at something that will threaten opponents. It only takes one low-investment method of spontaneously casting (either a Runestaff or Uncanny Forethought) to be more than capable of solving all the party's problems by yourself.

[Thillidan]

What sources are you allowed? are you trying to hit a higher ceiling? You have a very solid build. I wouldn't consider them broken. You could replace your wizard bonus feats with fighter ones. Improved Initiative and Mounted Combat(for phantom Steed) are good ones. Other Feats that could boost your power are Item Familiar, Miser with Magic, Spell Swap, Least Legacy(on your item Familiar), lesser Legacy, and greater Legacy. To break your wizard you would need to use broken prestige classes. Incantatrix, Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil, Tainted Scholar, Metaphysical Spellshaper, ect...

Edit: I would swap enlarge spell with sculpt spell, that or buy a rod of it. Also Incantatrix is hardly overrated. it's a staple of the Mailman build and can bust up campaigns by providing 24 hour buffs on things like Wraithstrike. You can snatch spells from other casters and to top it off you only have to fit 3 levels into your build to abuse it. So I don't care how many spells you have prepared X10/Incant 3/Iot7v 7 is easily going to mess up your day and anyone elses that isn't punpun.

So... Improved Initiative I dropped for the whole "Uncanny Forethought" Idea, with Geometer.
I'm not trying to break, I'm just wanting to know whether the build is actually weak, or if it NEEDS anything that it's lacking in order to be good.
I dont need Scult spell. Archmage's do that with high arcana. Same as swap element types, and cast Time stop 2/day as a spell like ability.

And incantatrix IS overrated because it is broken. Breaking your DM's game isn't something you should aim for. It's called "being a jerk" and players who aim for stuff like taht are usually kicked from D&D groups within moments.

Also, Punpun is not legit... its a misinterpretation of wording in the rules. Adding the word "Natural" to the abused sentence fixes it.

[Thillidan]

I would grab the feat Practiced Spellcaster, which allows you to cast from reserved slots without taking a caster level hit. I like Mage of the Arcane Order and Geometer on your build, but specializing is already brutal and Master Specialist is very detrimental. Especially to your build, which aims to be a Sorcerer who knows 100+ spells.

So, basically; I have 5 schools of magic. With Runestaff of Illusion or Runestaff of enchantment, I really only have 1 prohibited school. I can still cast any spell because of spellpool, which I'd only really use for Illusion or Enchantment.

[Thillidan]

You're one Spell Focus feat short of qualifying for Archmage. Any arcane spellcaster who meets the skill and spell prerequisites of Archmage could go around calling himself an Archmage without taking even a single level of that class. In-character nobody would have any way of knowing that there's no mechanical representation of that class on your character sheet, since metagame concepts such as character classes and levels don't exist in-character and never will.


There are plenty of ways to not have to prepare your spells ahead of time as a Wizard:

Any arcane spellcaster can use the Ancestral Relic Runestaff (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?267805-Sorcerer-Handbook#4) trick to have a fairly large list of spells they can spontaneously cast. It has a greater impact on classes that have a limited number of spells known, but it's still useful for giving a Wizard spontaneous access to choice spells. You can even put non-Wizard spells on it, make a UMD check each day when you attune to it to emulate the class spell list of whatever other spells it contains, and you'll be able to cast those just like any other spells on the Runestaff.

Shadowcraft Mage allows you to spontaneously convert prepared spells into shadow illusions to cast offensive spells that are >100% real. This allows you to spend your prepared spells on situational and utility spells, and turn them into shadow illusions on the fly.

A Beguiler/Wizard/Ultimate Magus gets 19/20 Wizard casting and Versatile Spellcaster allows him to spend Beguiler spell slots two at a time to spontaneously cast any Wizard spell he knows of up to 5th level. Plus your caster level is going to be four higher than your character level, or if you dip Spellthief for 18/20 Wizard casting your caster level will be in the thirties. Plus you can get Able Learner and have all those Beguiler class skills for your entire career.

Any character can take the feat Magical Training to get a spellbook into which they've copied a few spells and the ability to cast a few 0-level spells from it. Per the Rules Compendium, this enables you to add more spells to your spellbook the same way a Wizard does. Anyone can put the same 1st level spell on every page of their spellbook, then cast Secret Page (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/secretPage.htm) to turn one of those into a different spell of any level, and it will still occupy only a single page. This can even be done with the Blessed Book, so you don't need Wizard levels to have a spellbook and you don't need Geometer to make each one occupy a single page. Anyone who spontaneously casts spells (Sorcerer, Beguiler, Warmage, Favored Soul, Spirit Shaman, etc.) can take Versatile Spellcaster from Races of the Dragon and spend their spontaneous slots to fuel that feat and cast any of those spells they have in that spellbook. So that gets spells known like a Wizard has on a spontaneous casting class.

There are item sets in MIC that give you the ability to cast specific spells, namely the Raiment of the Four and the Seven Veils.


The reason Incantatrix is good is because it allows you to add Persistent Spell to your buffs after you've cast them by making a Spellcraft check. You can take ten on that check, and it's fairly easy to get your bonus high enough to succeed in persisting every spell level you can cast. Buffs like Shield, Ray Deflection, Draconic Polymorph/Shapechange, Superior Invisibility, Foresight, Selective Spell Antimagic Field, Magic Circle Against Evil, Dragonsight, Fell Drain/Frighten Death Armor and Fire Shield twice, Fell Drain/Frighten Cloud of Knives a few dozen times, Fell Drain/Frighten Thunderlance, Dimension Jumper, Arcane Spellsurge, etc. It basically enables you to make your character invulnerable, on top of having all-day offensive options so you can harm opponents without spending any additional spells (and automatically harming them if they ever manage to hit you). You can even persist touch-range spells with Arcane Reach from Archmage. Best of all, it only takes three levels in the class to get the class feature that does this!


It's clear what gimmicks you've given this character, but what do you want this character to actually do? Your Transmutation specialty suggests that you intend to be a buffer/debuffer, but you don't have any of the tools that increase your DCs for debuffing to be reliable, and it becomes less useful at this level anyway. It looks like you expect to just be a wizard and you expect everything to fall into place for you because of that. Maybe your group has the patience to sit around while you flip through your 1,000 spells looking for the right one for the current situation, but generally just being well prepared and having a few spontaneous spell options is more than sufficient for a high level character. You're sort of overdoing the spontaneous gimmick, I'd consider the Mage of the Arcane Order levels unnecessary. As I said earlier, you don't need to have a prestige class written on your character sheet to claim to be that in-character, you could have joined the guild, paid your dues for a few months, traded a thousand spells with other members, and then bailed out without ever picking up the class or even spending any feats on its prerequisites. Plenty of characters fulfill the special prerequisites of a prestige class several levels before they fully qualify for it, so you could have just fallen out of good standing before taking Cooperative Spell and never went back, maybe the guild life just wasn't for him.


A few suggestions:
Get rid of Spell Penetration, and pick up a Wand of Assay Spell Resistance (SC). It's expensive, but the Rules Compendium has clarified that spell trigger and spell completion items (wands, staffs, scrolls) take the same action to activate as the spell's casting time, so it's still a swift action to use, and it lasts multiple rounds.

Get a weapon that needs masterwork purchased multiple times, such as a double weapon, ideally you'll want an Elvencraft (Composite) Longbow in RotW, which counts as a quarterstaff and a bow. It needs masterwork three times, so you should be able to put three wand chambers from Dungeonscape in it. as long as you're holding that item, you're counted as holding all three wands it contains. Wands of spells like Nerveskitter, Assay Spell Resistance, and maybe Summon Component in CM are good to always have at the ready just in case you need them. That item, being a quarterstaff, can also be made into a custom Runestaff per the above trick I mentioned.

The above weapon counts as multiple different weapons for purposes of upgrade costs. Each of the three portions of it should be +1 Defending, each can have Spellblade added separately and keyed to a different targeted spell, and you can spread around various +X cost enchantments so no one portion costs a huge amount. Good choices include Eager, Warning, and Parrying. You can put Greater Magic Weapon +5 on each of those, and add +15 to your AC every round from Defending, which explicitly stacks with all other AC bonuses, including other Defending bonuses.

Metamagic rods are amazing, but keep in mind that using them with your spontaneously cast spells will take extra long to cast. A Circlet of Rapid Casting in MIC is a lot cheaper than a Lesser Rod of Quicken, and you can add an Enhancement bonus to Int onto it for the same price as a Headband of Int of the same bonus per MIC p234.

Figure out what you want the character to do, other than overdoing spontaneously casting spells as a Wizard, and put a bit more focus toward that. If you're going to be buffing your party like a good transmuter, get more feats and class feature to make you better/more efficient at that. If you're going to be debuffing opponents like a good transmuter, get more feats and class features to increase your DCs, just look over the save bonuses of CR 20 Outsiders and Dragons to get an idea of where you need to be. Your current build is more designed to do more things than it is to be good at what things it does, focus more on making your character good at something that will threaten opponents. It only takes one low-investment method of spontaneously casting (either a Runestaff or Uncanny Forethought) to be more than capable of solving all the party's problems by yourself.

So, I started to read the wall of text and already found books I've never heard of.
Runestaves are awesome. But why spend money on something a feat gives me? [This isn't entirely dirrected at you]
Longbow isnt something im proficient in, and making a Bow, into 3 wands, and a runestaff sounds broken as all hell. I Doubt my DM (let alone ANY DM) would allow it without the Item creation feats. I know I certainly wouldn't.

Also, I should ahve mentioned; The ONLY books we allow are:
Player's Handbooks (all of them)
Dungeon Master's Guide (all of them)
Complete *insert word* (all of them)
Magic Item Compendium.
Spell Compendium.
Races of Stone/ the Wilds.

[Thillidan]

So, as far as I had been made aware, Incantatrix was a 3.0 Class from Faerun
http://kmalloy.cloudapp.net/dndtools.eu/classes/incantatrix/index.html
Which was fair and balanced....

Having looked at the 3.5 class (which is far from the same thing) I would not allow the class [And my DM has agreed] in ANY campaign, for any reason.
Sorry guys. Now I see why people say its broken/strong.

[defiantdan]

So, as far as I had been made aware, Incantatrix was a 3.0 Class from Faerun
http://kmalloy.cloudapp.net/dndtools.eu/classes/incantatrix/index.html
Which was fair and balanced....

Having looked at the 3.5 class (which is far from the same thing) I would not allow the class [And my DM has agreed] in ANY campaign, for any reason.
Sorry guys. Now I see why people say its broken/strong.

I've been looking at your posts and like I said before when I posted what's your ceiling? You have been really quite ornery with our suggestions. Just because you don't play at a table that allows that kind of optimization doesn't mean everybody does. I DM and I allow just about anything at my table except for inifite wish loops. I do this simply because I have strong system mastery that I can still challenge my PC's. Something isn't broken unless you can't handle it. My group enjoys the power and realizes that the challenge doesn't come from generating high numbers.

Like most of us have been saying. You don't need that much spontaneity on your wizard. With some good scouting, good roleplaying and a strong understanding of which spells are good, you don't need both mage of the arcane order and uncanny forethought. Being able to cast any spell from a 1000 isn't as good as just being well prepared or having a good group to fill in what spells you haven't prepared. Stepping on toes will get you kicked from a group sooner than rolling up a creature with high numbers.

[atemu1234]

I've been looking at your posts and like I said before when I posted what's your ceiling? You have been really quite ornery with our suggestions. Just because you don't play at a table that allows that kind of optimization doesn't mean everybody does. I DM and I allow just about anything at my table except for inifite wish loops. I do this simply because I have strong system mastery that I can still challenge my PC's. Something isn't broken unless you can't handle it. My group enjoys the power and realizes that the challenge doesn't come from generating high numbers.

Like most of us have been saying. You don't need that much spontaneity on your wizard. With some good scouting, good roleplaying and a strong understanding of which spells are good, you don't need both mage of the arcane order and uncanny forethought. Being able to cast any spell from a 1000 isn't as good as just being well prepared or having a good group to fill in what spells you haven't prepared. Stepping on toes will get you kicked from a group sooner than rolling up a creature with high numbers.

Also, Incantatrix isn't out-of-the-box broken, it takes optimizing spellcraft to a great degree to make it any better or worse than running a straight wizard.

[defiantdan]

Also, Incantatrix isn't out-of-the-box broken, it takes optimizing spellcraft to a great degree to make it any better or worse than running a straight wizard.

That is an excellent point :).