ultimate magus build

[iceman10058]

hey, im making an ultimate magus in an upcoming game and im looking for feat ideas for the character.

[Brova]

Illuminan (I probably spelled that wrong, the human-ish guys with forehead runes) Beguiler 1/Wizard 4/Ultimate Magus 10. Practice Spellcaster (Beguiler) + Sigils mean you lose 1 level of Wizard casting. Just pick up metamagic feats mostly. Sculpt Spell, Extend Spell, Chain Spell, Quicken Spell. Also figure out what you want to do with the last five levels and grab feats for that. Archmage is basically okay, but requires a good deal of investment. Incantatrix is good and synergistic, but broken as hell. War Weaver is good, but I don't like dropping a second caster level. You can probably specialize, maybe go focused specialist, drop evocation (obviously) and both illusion and enchantment. That's not normally a great plan, but your Beguiler side should cover them.

[Thurbane]

Beguiler/Wizard is generally a good base.

Better yet, go specialist Wizard and ban Enchantment and Illusion, since Beguiler will cover you pretty well for those anyway. Maybe focus on Transmutation or Conjuration.

If you can afford the feat, take one of the Bloodline feats from Dragon Compendium to add 9 extra spells to your Beguiler list.

And grab an (Improved) familiar, so he can use the UMD ranks you get from Beguiler. When you can afford it, arm him with a Rod of Many Wands. Boom! (If you ditch your familiar from Wizard for an ACF, you can grab a familiar that will benefit from all of your casting levels with the Obtain Familiar feat).

[Troacctid]

Thirding the Beguiler 1/Wizard 4 base. Keying both classes off of Int is very valuable, Beguilers have a good spell list, and even though you miss out on skill points at later levels, getting the quadruple skill points for 1st level on a class with 6+Int is nice. You'll probably want Able Learner to keep those juicy class skills.

Practiced Spellcaster for your lower-level class is essential on an Ultimate Magus because of the way its advancement works. You want your casting progression to be focused on one side as much as possible, because in the long run, the casting of a Wizard 19/Beguiler 8 is significantly more powerful than that of a Wizard 16/Beguiler 11, and in the short run, gaining access to higher-level spell slots in a timely manner is of the essence in order to avoid falling behind. Being an Illumian with the krau sigil is also a big help, and I recommend that as well. (Naen is a good choice for your second sigil.)

[iceman10058]

thanks for the advice guys. i usually play clerics so this is new for me.

[Psyren]

Another viable option (though not as good as Wizard/Beguiler) is Sha'ir/Sorcerer.