Advice on how to use Noctumancer

[Odin's Eyepatch]

Tl;dr: If you HAD to take Noctumancer, how would you build it without using early entry tricks?

I'm playing a human wizard, specialised in transmutation, with a focus on being a skillmonkey and boosting his familiar. His goal is to be the very best (like no one ever wasTM), overthrow the current Arcane Council, and crown himself High Archmage of the Kingdom.

His actual build at level 5 is Wizard 2/Human Paragon 3 (not every level in that order). Eventually, he'll be going into Unseen Seer and Archmage. I've literally spent years on this build, trawling forums, books, and others to find the best way to make a nice, rounded character, not too OP, but good enough to be a force to be reckoned with.

The rest of the party is composed of a wujen, a cleric, a warblade, and a commoner/survivor/artificer. All have optimised to varying degrees, but nothing too powerful for now.


Current character build is: Human paragon 1/ wizard 1/ Human Paragon 2-3/ Wizard 2

Recently in the campaign, we've discovered that Shadow Magic plays a pivotal role in the story (and lorewise, we don't even KNOW its shadow magic. It's incredibly rare and practically unheard off in the campaign world, and the DM has hinted that there is more too it). And of course, since I'm playing an ambitious wizard hellbent on fighting other wizards, the Noctumancer class has suddenly turned out to look very promising... thematically. I won't go into too much detail, but suffice to say it would fit his character perfectly to do so.

Unfortunately, I'm already 5 levels into the character, and I would need to take 3 levels of shadowcaster just to qualify for Noctumancer. I've worked out that i will be 4 levels behind on my wizard spell advancement, and 5 levels behind on my shadowcaster advancement. I'm aware of the trap of theurging, but how would you do it to make the trap less painful?

So, how would you do it? I have no experience whatsoever with theurges, so any advice welcome, or on what to expect.

I could always just NOT take it, but I feel like I'm missing a golden opportunity here.

[MisterKaws]

Actually, Noctumancer is pretty good, since you can follow it up with Mystic Theurge and get double 9ths. And there isn't a single arcane spell that can beat Black Labyrinth in terms of large-scale BFC, though a Druid might have some spells with comparable power, but with either a smaller area or longer setup time.

In your case, however, you have one dead casting level, and too many Wizard levels. If you could just swap ou your three Human Paragon levels into Shadowcaster, you'd have an average Noctumancer done, although the ideal build is Wizard 1(Precocious apprentice)/Shadowcaster 3/Noctumancer 10/Mystic Theurge 6, resulting in 17th-level Wizard casting for all utility and Batman cheese, and Shadowcaster for your main combat spells, supported by Wizard casting.

[Telonius]

That's a really harsh entry. If you were building it from the ground up, you might be able to get in using some Kobold shenanigans, but ... yeah, it's going to be underwhelming unless the DM takes steps to make it better than it is. If you're dead set on using something from Tome of Magic (seriously, is it ToM week here? :smallbiggrin:) you might consider Child of Night. It will lose you fewer caster levels, and give you some shadow-themed abilities.

EDIT: I don't believe Shadowcaster would qualify for Mystic Theurge as written. It doesn't grant divine spellcasting, so you'd need to get a favorable DM ruling on it. (Personally I'd allow it).

[Odin's Eyepatch]

That's a really harsh entry. If you were building it from the ground up, you might be able to get in using some Kobold shenanigans, but ... yeah, it's going to be underwhelming unless the DM takes steps to make it better than it is. If you're dead set on using something from Tome of Magic (seriously, is it ToM week here? :smallbiggrin:) you might consider Child of Night. It will lose you fewer caster levels, and give you some shadow-themed abilities.

EDIT: I don't believe Shadowcaster would qualify for Mystic Theurge as written. It doesn't grant divine spellcasting, so you'd need to get a favorable DM ruling on it. (Personally I'd allow it).

In all honesty, I only thought about Noctumancer when I saw the other thread about ToM, so it's not totally out of the blue :smalltongue:

I never noticed that Child of Night was open to other spellcasters. While it does lack a few of the reasons why I am interested in noctumancer, it is indeed a lot kinder in regards to caster levels. I will certainly keep that in mind.


Actually, Noctumancer is pretty good, since you can follow it up with Mystic Theurge and get double 9ths. And there isn't a single arcane spell that can beat Black Labyrinth in terms of large-scale BFC, though a Druid might have some spells with comparable power, but with either a smaller area or longer setup time.

In your case, however, you have one dead casting level, and too many Wizard levels. If you could just swap ou your three Human Paragon levels into Shadowcaster, you'd have an average Noctumancer done, although the ideal build is Wizard 1(Precocious apprentice)/Shadowcaster 3/Noctumancer 10/Mystic Theurge 6, resulting in 17th-level Wizard casting for all utility and Batman cheese, and Shadowcaster for your main combat spells, supported by Wizard casting.

Human Paragon did feel like a good idea at the time, but yeah, in just a couple of hours I've had a complete change in viewpoint on how my character should advance.

Our gaming group is uneasy about retraining (or rebuilding). You need a good (ingame) reason to be able to retrain something, and it takes in-game time to complete it. Maybe if I get a good case with the rest of group I could haggle a decent price. Still...

[Troacctid]

Wizards and sorcerers can take advantage of the creeping darkness feature (TM 115) to replace their wizard or sorcerer levels with shadowcaster levels. This should make your entry much quicker.


EDIT: I don't believe Shadowcaster would qualify for Mystic Theurge as written. It doesn't grant divine spellcasting, so you'd need to get a favorable DM ruling on it. (Personally I'd allow it).
It does qualify as written. No houserule required. See the rules for shadowcasters and prestige classes (TM 117).

[Marlowe]

EDIT: I don't believe Shadowcaster would qualify for Mystic Theurge as written. It doesn't grant divine spellcasting, so you'd need to get a favorable DM ruling on it. (Personally I'd allow it).

Shadowcaster has a special rule where it can be used as either the Arcane or Divine side of a Theurge class.

[Odin's Eyepatch]

Wizards and sorcerers can take advantage of the creeping darkness feature (TM 115) to replace their wizard or sorcerer levels with shadowcaster levels. This should make your entry much quicker.



Hmmm, that's really handy! So if I used the creeping darkness feature, I could save myself an extra wizard level easy. So I would be

Human Paragon 1/ Wizard 1/ Human Paragon 2-3/ Shadowcaster 1-3/ Noctumancer X

That would give me 1 dead level (HP 1) but apart from that, I would be bog standard Noctumancer.

Do people think I'll be able to get away with that? I'm losing 4 caster levels on both side, instead of 3. If I'm very careful in my spell selection, would I be able to make up for the lost power? I'm guessing practised spellcaster is a given in this case.

EDIT: Actually, does anybody have any experience playing a noctumancer? I'd love to hear how it went :smallsmile:

[FearlessGnome]

Hmmm, that's really handy! So if I used the creeping darkness feature, I could save myself an extra wizard level easy. So I would be

Human Paragon 1/ Wizard 1/ Human Paragon 2-3/ Shadowcaster 1-3/ Noctumancer X

That would give me 1 dead level (HP 1) but apart from that, I would be bog standard Noctumancer.

Do people think I'll be able to get away with that? I'm losing 4 caster levels on both side, instead of 3. If I'm very careful in my spell selection, would I be able to make up for the lost power? I'm guessing practised spellcaster is a given in this case.

Why are you taking Human Paragon? The feat and stat boost are not worth it. Just go Wizard3/Shadowcaster3 or Wizard1 (With Precocious Apprentice)/Shadowcaster3. When you finish out Noctumancer, if you want you can just switch to Mystic Theurge.

If you absolutely must take Human Paragon, at least make it Wizard1 (with Precocious Apprentice)/Shadowcaster1/Human Paragon3 (advancing Shadowcaster), that way you lose 4 levels of wizard casting but only 2 levels of shadowcasting.

Edit: I'm assuming here you can use the Retraining rules. If not, ask to please be allowed to at least switch your paragon levels to advance Shadowcasting, and gobble up your Wizard levels for more Shadowcasting via the Creeping Darkness option. If you want both Human Paragon and Noctumancer, you can't be less than 4 levels behind on Wizard, but you can be only two levels behind on Shadowcasting.

[Odin's Eyepatch]

Why are you taking Human Paragon? The feat and stat boost are not worth it. Just go Wizard3/Shadowcaster3 or Wizard1 (With Precocious Apprentice)/Shadowcaster3. When you finish out Noctumancer, if you want you can just switch to Mystic Theurge.

If you absolutely must take Human Paragon, at least make it Wizard1 (with Precocious Apprentice)/Shadowcaster1/Human Paragon3 (advancing Shadowcaster), that way you lose 4 levels of wizard casting but only 2 levels of shadowcasting.

Well, originally it was because I had a completely different concept in mind, and I wanted to synergise the "able learner" feat with the "pick and choose your class skills" option from Human Paragon (amongst other things). We're already a third of the way into the campaign (we're level 5 now), so I'm sort of regretting the decisions I made a couple of years ago when I made this character.

I'm guessing it's not much of stretch to argue that "Creeping Darkness" can also be applied to the spellcasting in prestige classes.

(EDIT: I've just been edit ninja'd!)

It's just a shame that you couldn't apply precocious apprentice to shadowcaster instead. Would that be unbalanced?

[FearlessGnome]

I don't think it would be unbalanced, but it's entirely up to your DM. I would allow it, because Shadowcaster is a fun but weak class, and I'd encourage any player who wanted to sacrifice wizard casting for Shadowcasting.

[Telonius]

Wizards and sorcerers can take advantage of the creeping darkness feature (TM 115) to replace their wizard or sorcerer levels with shadowcaster levels. This should make your entry much quicker.


It does qualify as written. No houserule required. See the rules for shadowcasters and prestige classes (TM 117).



Ah! Skimmed over the exception, was just reading the bullet points.

[barakaka]

I haven't played a Noctumancer yet, but when I played my straight shadowcaster, I focused everything on making the biggest nova I could with the Killing Shadows mystery. I was made of paper mache, and could only do my full combo once a day and otherwise was offensively useless.

To work with those weaknesses:

I picked up Flicker, because Flicker is the best mystery/defensive spell ever
I stayed behind the party, and if anything happened I would Flicker back to them
I heavily relied on Congress of Shadows to communicate without putting myself in danger by travelling
I used Bend Perspective to peer around corners and to view things when I though something could be hiding
I used the Dark Lantern item to stay in shadowy illumination and cranked my hide skill
I had Still Mystery feat, because it is not a per day metashadow like the others, and I wanted to be able to Flicker in a grapple. Shadow Cast feat also helps with this, and is just useful for avoiding AOOs
I carried around a couple of custom Orbs of Nullification (Rings of Nullification from the Shadowmagic items, bought under the premise of the Magic Item Creation Rules). This left ring slots open, and I geared them toward weapon damage. You can and will be caught in melee with a gargantuan spider, and must be prepared! Still mystery helps with the strength damage from poison.
Shadow Familiar helped provide a good scout
Favored Mystery can increase the number of times a day you can use your favorite mystery to a respectable amount. Don't forget that having your mystery cast as Spell-Like and Supernatural also increases the number of times you can cast that mystery as per the Mysteries and Paths section in the Shadowcaster class section.


Things I should have done:

Get Scribe Scroll feat, and start scribing mysteries like the Shadow Magic Items section says you can
Get a wand of Arrow of Dusk
You only get so many mysteries. Scrolls and wands help, but you should use alchemical items with craft alchemy to supplement your utility.
You have Still Mystery (or you should), wear some damned armor


All of this said, that was the whole group's favourite PC that I made, because I had to be so absolutely paranoid (he survived the whole campa. I sent my friends in to make sure that crying girl beside the overturned cart wasn't a monster. I shot her with an Arrow of Dusk when they refused (turned out to be a succubus). But hey, it's nonlethal! I sent my friends in to fight that behemoth, because I couldn't contribute until I was absolutely sure I needed to blow everything on it. I barely survived a couple of trolls ambushing my camp by just flickering away to my horse and fleeing.

Keep in mind though, you will not have enough damage to do what I did. Focus on utility because your caster level is gonna be trash. If you wanna focus on Noctumancer, there's a thread on BG I think about cranking its dispel check for counterspelling.

[Odin's Eyepatch]

snip



Yeah, Flicker seems like a pure winner here. I'm also eager to get my hands on Shadow Familiar too, somehow. It seems you managed to have a lot of fun with the shadowcaster! Did you use the "fixes" suggested by the developer, or was this just pure, out of the book, shadowcaster?

Yeah, the important thing is that I'm sort of more interested in making a wizard who has dabbled in Shadow magic, rather a Shadowcaster who dabbles in arcane magic. So maybe utility mysteries will be more appropriate.

-- -- --

How well does Noctumancer stand up then with the rest of the party, supposing that you did go wizard 3/ Shadowcaster 3/ Noctumancer x?

My current course of action is to ask the DM if I could choose Precocious Apprentice as my 6th level feat, and use it in conjunction with 1 level of Shadowcaster (which I would also take at level 6). then I could go Noctumancer starting level 7. There are many problems with this, ruleswise, but I feels like it may be the best course forward, sacrificing little of my wizard advancement, for a "bonus" in shadowcasting.

It's a bit of a long shot though, so I'm still open to suggestions, stories, and advice :smallsmile:

[gorfnab]

Some handbook suggestions:

1. Read the Compiled Shadowcaster Handbook V2 in my signature.

2. If you are planning to actually use the Noctumancer's dispelling and counterspelling abilities read this handbook: Dispelling and Counterspelling Compilation (http://web.archive.org/web/20130314075814/http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871214/Dispelling_38;_Counterspelling_Compilation) (hopefully the link still works).

[Odin's Eyepatch]

Thanks for the links!

I am looking forward to trying a more "counterspell" centric role, and those noctumancer class abilities look really good. It's just so... frustrating that there is a -4 penalty between mysteries and spells when you're dispelling.