Ice Monarch Queen/Lord/Whatever

[Ruethgar]

I'm looking to make an ice character for 3.5(though Spheres of Power has been allowed) since my previous back-up leader character is shifting to more of an antagonist role as an undead leadership junkie and if I get a water character in there I'll have earth, wind, fire, and water as my back-ups. Firstly I would probably want this character to be elemental in nature and monstrous to some degree to match the theme of the other three(two dragonish things and an ent). I was looking for any suggestions on what that race might be or how I could finagle an ice elemental character without insane LA. Suggestions on the build would be appretiated as well, though going for triple concentration on a Nature Sphere: Water build seems likely.

[daremetoidareyo]

Uldra psychic rogue/monk into cryokineticist. Might need expanded knowledge...

[Rebel7284]

Race:
You can put a template on one of the cold-themed races in Frostburn (Snow Elf/Ice Gnome/Glacier Dwarf)
Dragonborn is always a good template or for one LA you can do Draconic Creature, Feral, Dark

Class:
Wizard 5/Frost Mage 10 is pretty simple, even if Frost Mage is unexciting.

[DrMartin]

A penguin-faced Tengu? :smallbiggrin:

For your build, the first thing that comes to mind is an iced-themed variation of the flame blooded tradition: warping through ice and frozen things, paired with an at-will ice blast from destruction, and precipitation and cold control from the weather sphere.

Nature [water] is powerful but if i'm not mistaken all the water powers require water to begin with, so I'd invest in some weather or creation to generate your element

Several feats from Frostburn that are usually very situational become very interesting for you, since you can generate your pocket of cold weather basically at will. For istance feats like Frostfell Prodigy and Frozen Magic.

Also, you'll probably want or need either Piercing Cold or Lord of the Uttercold, depending on campaign and alignment

[ILM]

For a caster I like Winterhaunt of Iborighu at least up to 8th (though the capstone would work well thematically for you, if you're ok with the evil subtype). It has 1st level divine spells as a prerequisite but advances any casting, so you can do an arcane Winterhaunt with a 1-level dip (or other shenanigans).

[Ruethgar]

I like the look of the Cryokineticist, the abilities being mostly at will is very nice, not sure of any other way to get walls of ice indefinitely like that. Will definitely try to work this one into the build. As to the race, I wanted something a little more monstrous rather than humanoid in shape. I could probably get this via the Elemental Familiar spell and ritually add that one Fearunian cold elemental template. But that would maim my ability scores and abolish my WBL.

Wizard 5/Frost Mage 10 has the limited spells per day that I can and would strongly prefer to avoid for this.

Warping through ice and weather control would be nice, though the lack of targeting with the weather would be a challenge. I think I would go with the crystal blast for utility and just say it is ice.

Nature has Create Water for a spell point that can be used with other Nature abilities simultaneously(such as freeze) so I wouldn't need to be split with extra talents in creation, or I could just take the alter mechanics from there. I would need to invest in having the spell points to pull it off consistently, but if I wanted the least investment in SoP I could just take two talents and have some nice thematic abilities and then move on with more traditional methods.

As per the creator of SoP, the default is to deny spell/sphere transparency so I would have to go with normal spellcasting in addition to spheres to utilize the cold weather boons, Piercing Cold, and Lord of the Uttercold. Something I am not opposed to trying, but also would require more than a cursory snag of sphere powers.

Looking at it I'm not really sold on the winterhaunt. Seeing the Cold Strike ability just reminds my of the blasting power I am giving up by not just going with Dragon Mystic like I did with fire(+1d6/lvl breath weapon damage added to spells of the same type).

Edit: The earliest entry I can think of to Cryokineticist is an STP Erudite, with a bloodline and a contact, getting a Sanctum Energy Emanation from a Spellhoarding dragon, but that requires some serious psi/spell transparency abuse. That would get me in at level 2 but the more I look at it the less I'm liking it. Wall of Ice is nice, but I can get a similar effect from Spheres though it costs spell points to do so.

[A_S]

Looking at it I'm not really sold on the winterhaunt. Seeing the Cold Strike ability just reminds my of the blasting power I am giving up by not just going with Dragon Mystic like I did with fire(+1d6/lvl breath weapon damage added to spells of the same type).
Just a note, the major draw of Winterhaunt is not the couple of extra damage dice, it's the free Piercing Cold on all your spells. If doing cold damage is your whole thing, bypassing cold immunity is kind of a big deal.

As for races: There's a half-elemental template in the Manual of the Planes that might work. The half water elemental version includes some cold-themed stuff; you could easily swap out a few of the SLA's for more cold-focused stuff of a similar level if it's allowed. The template has no listed LA (not LA: -, just no entry for it). Under the strictest reading, I believe that means "same LA as base creature" for a template, though a lot of DM's (quite reasonably) won't let that fly.

[Ruethgar]

The half elementals are a massive LA +4 or so as I recall. The free Piercing Cold would be nice but I'm wanting to go for more combat utility than just straight blaster and would prefer not to use up levels on it especially if I am going with a different base than spellcasting.

[atemu1234]

Yuki-Onna from Oriental Adventures, with unassociated levels of Wizard, or even Cleric?

[Solaris]

Yuki-Onna from Oriental Adventures, with unassociated levels of Wizard, or even Cleric?

With that +8 Charisma, why not sorcerer? They're ECL 11 with that +3 LA, which makes them... less than great at casting.
I've seen someone's Frostwind Virago class sitting in a signature, and that looked pretty good. It's homebrew, though.

[Ruethgar]

Arctic Desert Dwelling Gnome-
Sorcerer 1
Flaw: Extra Familiar
Flaw: Precocious Apprentice(Sanctum Familiar Form)
First: Magically Adept

Cast familiar form twice, dismiss the first one then the second one and you are stuck in your first familiar's body. Retrain/rebuild/shuffle Precocious Apprentice, Extra Familiar, and Sorcerer away and buy a casting of Elemental Familiar. You are now any valid familiar species as a tiny elemental with your normal mental stats. You can abuse the hell out of the bit in Familiar form that lets you use the body as your own and see about advancing your health, or just keep the familiar and get half health from your normal advancements.

Use Magically Adept and Magical Affinity(replacing Precocious Apprentice) and Magic in the Blood(replacing Extra Familiar) and take some nice things.

War Create Water(Twin Repeat Sanctum Occular Ray Splitting Ray Extension Persist): as an SLA remove the casting time and material cost comes out with some decent water creation skills. Ice is water, anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or trying to gimp you. With a Bloodline that is a 6x5x5 block of ice per round for a day as one of your racial SLAs so 3/day.

Ray of Frost(Piercing Ray Burst Ray Extension Persist): 1d3 30ft aura of cold damage for the day 3/day.

Animate Water(Sanctum Occular Chain Persist): 1+1/lvl minions! Need Swift Concentration. 3/day

Create Water: Add side effects but won't do much, still nice to have another 3/day even if only 8gal.

Ray of Frost(double damage side effect): 3/day 2d4+1d3 cold ray.

The rest depend on your int but I would repeat the first three if you can because they potentially rely on maintaining concentration which you can't easily do unless you are a Major Bloodlined Awakened animal and even then only at level 3+ without a contact.

[DrMartin]

what does magically adept do? I cannot find that anywhere :D Does it somehow give you 3rd level slot at 1st level to cast familiar form?

Anyhow assuming it works, seems like a very complex way to get to where you want to go, to the point that UMD-ing a couple of Dorje to do a psionic sandwich with a nasty frost monster (say, a Remorhaz or something) that has been drained to 1 HD seems easy by camparison :smallbiggrin:

[Ruethgar]

I picked Sanctum Familiar form so it is a 2nd level for precocious apprentice. Magically Adept and Magical Affinity I always get mixed up, one switches your Gnome SLAs to any three of your choice from a dragon mag, the other from KoK gives you int 0lvl spells 1/day each. It is on very shaky ground all in all but it comes out with a not so powerful effect that fits the thematic.

Alternatively could get a casting of Elemental Familiar on yourself with an Air ritual association and Orgash template ritual for the race, less shaky ground but you would then have to get your ice powers elsewhere and would have set stats instead of point buy or roll. Get Sculpt Self for a custom prestige race using a staff as the base for the abilities with a bio charger and you can have a semblance of a mana system with a small handful of powers of your choosing. Though that requires DM approval.

[DrMartin]

well sanctum spell clearly says that the spell still requires a slot of the original level...so even if you could somehow argue that you can pick it as a second level spell for precocious apprentice because outside of your sanctum it has an effective spell level of two (that's the wording of the feat), you still need a 3rd level slot to cast it...at least I think it works like that.

[Ruethgar]

So switch to elf wizard and then ritually change to gnome for the SLA's once you are in the body you want. Very convoluted which is why I was looking for a more elegant solution or alternative race, one of which I presented.