Enhancement Caster

[Cyussu]

So I've been working on trying to set up a proper enhancement casting character. Rulings are Gestalt, LA+2. I fished out Catfolk with Fire-Souled, focusing on mid-game levels, around 8th, for my caster to get proper feats and spell level to persist spell everything forever. My only issue is is this really worthwhile to do? A character purely built, looking at combat, for keeping the party with turn-by-turn AoE Enhancement Spells and some Enfeebling spells. He's Cleric/Bardic Knack, and was planning on only PRC'ing off Cleric, but wanted to keep full caster levels if possible. I tried looking, but there's literally nothing (That I could find) that deals with buffing parties effectively without just saying "Get Persist, Divine Metamagic Persist, drop spells like mad at start of day. Done."

[Galvin]

An enhancement, or "buffing" mage is considered to be an optimized and worthy role for mage classes. In combat, the role of the magic caster is not to inflict direct damage on an opponent, but to use their magic to make it much easier for the melee to inflict direct damage.

For example, consider a 5th level Wizard with the option to cast either a Fireball or a Haste. A fireball at 5th level does 5d6 damage, or 15 damage on average with a failed save. A fighter with a +2 great sword and 18 Strength can do 2d6+8 damage a hit, or 14 damage on average per hit. If giving a fighter an extra attack per round doubles their damage output, the potential effect of a Fireball is, as said, 15 damage with a failed reflex save, or 140 on a Haste, assuming all attack rolls hit. That is 125 more average potential damage more with a buff spell as opposed to a direct damage spell. While a fireball is more glamorous, a wizard job isn't to be glamorous, but to be powerful.

The answer to your question if buffing is a good role for a wizard, yes. Given the example above you can see how just a 5th level character can either inflict a marginal amount of damage to a target by themselves, or help their teammate to do nearly ten times that. After all D&D is a team game, and if you are a player who is willing to sacrifice time in the spotlight for combat effectiveness, then buffing is a very worthwhile pursuit.

However, in my opinion, a wizard looking to buff should be a Conjurer or a Transmuter focusing on Crowd Control magic, with buffing on the side.

[GilesTheCleric]

DMM:P is the go-to for buffing since it's probably the most straightforward, and in many cases most efficient option. Charisma is one of the easiest stats to buff and use as a replacement for other stats, so it's easily made more synergistic as well.

If you're after some other options, check out:

Bard or Marshall builds
War Weaver, Rainbow Servant, Spelldancer, and Incantatrix PrCs (going with wiz or clr are probably the best base classes; each offers different types of buffs, though some overlap)
Illumian Race
Chain, Echoing, and Extend Spell MMs (and MM rods)
Ability Enhancer feat (DC 91)
spell slot preparation mechanics, Anyspell, Runestaffs (leaving slots open to fill later, increased versatility)
Customize Domain feat (drag325 61)
divination spells (to know ahead of time which buffs you'll need so you don't waste slots)
summoning spells (why spend your own slots to buff when summons can do it for you?)
teleportation spells (to increase the efficiency of the duration of your spells; if your cap is 4th level spells, then tricks to get higher-level spells for Plane Shift might be necessary)
Permanency, Spell Runes (Runecaster), Scribe Tattoo, scrolls, Eternal Wands, custom magic items (anything to save you slots)

Hopefully that's a good start. I will note that using buffs "turn-by-turn" is necessary in some cases (haste, other round/CL spells that aren't persisted), but if you can buff at the beginning of the day or before fights start, you'll have more options once you're in combat (BFC like Ice Slick, Wall of X, Obscuring Mist, Summon Monster X, etc). Debuffs can be good to use as well, but they're best when targeted against strong foes (like bosses).

Most direct debuffs are single-target, and unless the spell is something like Dominate that will take them out of the fight entirely (SoL, save-or-lose), might not really help the party kill the foe. Consider the win condition that your party uses (likely hp damage), and base your debuff spell picks around that -- if it's hp damage, then con reduction, AC reduction, and even blasting spells will help to make your party's method more cohesive, rather than being at cross-purposes (there's no point in reducing the will save of a foe whose entrails your barbarian is intent on dangling off his battleaxe).

[PaucaTerrorem]

Check out War Weaver if you really want to be a party buffer.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Check out War Weaver if you really want to be a party buffer.

Seconded. War Weaver let's you get your short-term buffing out of the way with a move action (and even saves you spell slots) at the start of combat and you can use your in-combat actions on debuffs and BFC.
There's also a few tricks to get divine spells on a War Weaver build.

For pure cleric buffing i'd rather take DMM:Chain than DMM:Persist. Persist costs a lot of turn uses, which limits you to 2-3 persisted buffs/day unless you invest a lot of resources into it, making it more of a self-enhancement choice.
Getting those juicy single-target buffs on your whole party for a single slot is more efficient if you want to focus on buffing the whole party instead of just yourself.

[Cyussu]

Thank you all very much for the information. Right now at 1st level, I already have 9 Turn Attempts without burning a feat, and was planning on getting long-term Cha gear as well as dipping 2 feats into Extra Turning. Persist being a +6 Slot, I was going to use it mostly on the higher end spells like Mass Bull's Strength and the like, saving most of my spells per day to be able to be usable throughout the day.

As for classes, since it's gestalt, I was hoping to not be forced off Bardic Knack since it grants 1/2 it's lvl into Skill Checks. And using Cleric to branch off of since it's mainly there for the Domain Spells & the better HD. So War Weaver may end up not being all that helpful for me since I was aiming for a mostly Divine Caster for the actual buffs, and the Bard side to fix any possible open ends.

Since my primary goal is to allow Bardic Knack to go untouched for the free skill "points" to combo with Knowledge Devotion. I was /thinking/ of going into Bone Knight, but I'm presuming that since "Turn Undead" changes to "Rebuke Undead" I can no longer burn extra Turning for DMMs.

[GilesTheCleric]

Turning changing to rebuking is no problem for DMM. Turning is what the activity is called in general; unless a feat specifies only turning and not rebuking/ rebuking non-undead, then you can apply either turns or rebukes. I'd quote you the relevant section from CD or PHB , but I'm on mobile. I think it's PHB 159.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Thank you all very much for the information. Right now at 1st level, I already have 9 Turn Attempts without burning a feat, and was planning on getting long-term Cha gear as well as dipping 2 feats into Extra Turning. Persist being a +6 Slot, I was going to use it mostly on the higher end spells like Mass Bull's Strength and the like, saving most of my spells per day to be able to be usable throughout the day.

Beware: any spell that grants an enhancement bonus to stats is based. The people who need that stat will already have bought items that grant enhancement bonuses.

[Cyussu]

@Giles; Ah, that's MUCH more helpful then.

@Zamiel; Yes, I am aware of that. But I don't plan on spamming stuff like Str+ when the majority of the party is Str-focused. I was mostly going to go with trying to spam like Vigor and the like. More focused on support as stated before, and not /everybody/ is going to, nor is exactly capable of, maxing out each stat through magic items, since some, like my biased opinion favorite, like the Belt of Magnificence (+6) is over 1/2 a million gold just to buy, which that alone opens up a much larger variety of items instead of the plain & simple "Cha Cloak, Dex Gloves, Str Belt, Wis Head" stuff.

Also, Persist Rage would stack, in theory, with the Enhancement Bonus items like Giant's Belt's Str bonus, would it not?

My main goal is to early-game max out duration of Bull's Strength and Bear's Endurance until the party can get some Str/Dex/Con gear to keep themselves alive. Then I'll be focused mostly on keeping Vigor up all day and some other oddball buffs like the aforementioned Rage on non-barbarians to increase damage output overall at the cost of AC.

[GilesTheCleric]

Don't forget that MIC allows for "common effects" like +x to stats or saves to be added to other magic items without the 1.5x cost multiplier, so you can have your +4 dex gloves of the balanced hand for the cost of +4 stat + GotBH cost (edit: I think that's 16k + 8k = 24k? Afb).

[Cyussu]

And I presume you cannot stack 2 different stats? Like since hand slot have a Str & Dex item, you wouldn't be able to place +4 Str & +2 Dex, could you?

[ExLibrisMortis]

You can, actually. You could make an item of +8 armour, +6 strength, +6 dexterity, worn on the arms. Or a body item with +5 deflection, +5 natural armour and +8 armour.

[Cyussu]

Well damn...That just made /everything/ more absurd. THANK YOU!! X3


Edit: Oh something came across my mind...Can you go HIGHER than the given? Like +8 Dex, or +10 AC?

[ExLibrisMortis]

Edit: Oh something came across my mind...Can you go HIGHER than the given? Like +8 Dex, or +10 AC?
The MIC gives no costs for that, so you'd have to default to the DMG rules, which I believe state that such items would be epic. Or maybe that's somewhere else.

[Cyussu]

The MIC gives no costs for that, so you'd have to default to the DMG rules, which I believe state that such items would be epic. Or maybe that's somewhere else.


I could see that... I was just asking because I was looking at the srd about crafting, and all it really says is "Stat Squared x 1,000" for price. Along with the basic requirements like Spell + feat(s)

[ZamielVanWeber]

The MIC gives no costs for that, so you'd have to default to the DMG rules, which I believe state that such items would be epic. Or maybe that's somewhere else.

I can't find the rule but +8 items are listed under Epic items.

As for the MIC rules each effect has 3 slots associated with it. As long as they occupy the same slot you are good. (There are also costs for upgrading items from their previous form).

[GilesTheCleric]

+x to stats isn't broken or ridiculous. Keep in mind that each +2 only means a +1 to actual effects, which means pre-epic it's capped to +3. +3 to saves and DCs is nice, but by the time you're at the levels to comfortably afford such an item, that +3 affects long-term averages much more than single die rolls.

Stat inflation can make games troublesome, but it's far from the worst thing that can happen to a game. Further, the CR system assumes that PCs are buying stat increases as they level, for whatever the CR system and its assumptions are worth (little, but it's nice to note).