Beguiler in Pathfinder

[Hogsy]

I was allowed to play a Beguiler in a Pathfinder game and the guys in that party are adamant against using 3.5 material. My question is whether I'll be able to make it without some of the Beguiler chassis such as Shadow Weave Magic or Vow of Nonviolence that helps them boost their DCs due to their spell selection being mostly save or suck and even skill tricks to help with Concealed Casting and Concentration checks. The extra feats of PF will help me pick up an additional Spell Focus or two, but I'm not really sure where to go from there as I usually play Blasters in Pathfinder if using a Spellcasting class. Any ideas? I'm starting with Spell Focus (Enchantment) and most likely Improved Initiative.

About the campaign: We start at level 1, and I have been informed that the campaign will be urban and with mostly social/RP encounters. The group consists of Unchained Rogue, Slayer and a Fighter. I am not a huge fan of Casters but I thought a rogueish caster would fit perfect in such a group and considering it'll be a social game, Beguilers sound awesome. I'd play a Wizard but I like the restriction of the Beguiler considering I'll be playing with T4(or less) classes. I always wanted to play a Beguiler anyway so this sounds like the best chance to try.

Beguiler house rules: The Beguiler I'm playing casts with Cha OR Int, whichever is higher, has 7 + int ranks per level and I also gain Trapfinding.

So, any ideas?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Beguilers are impressively strong casters right off the bat, so I wouldn't worry about not having top-tier options. Like, you're a full caster with a huge and powerful list; you don't need Shadow Weave Magic to show off. Slap a good score on your casting stat and you're golden.

[Hogsy]

Beguilers are impressively strong casters right off the bat, so I wouldn't worry about not having top-tier options. Like, you're a full caster with a huge and powerful list; you don't need Shadow Weave Magic to show off. Slap a good score on your casting stat and you're golden.

Yeah, I suppose you're right. Many of their spells are top notch such as Hypnotism or Color Spray. I may be getting a bit paranoid 'cause they tend to slap some high saves on their monsters and I don't have much experience with this type of caster, so we'll see how it goes. I'm confident in my ability to use ghost sound and that general line of spells so at least I have that.

Thanks though, you helped get rid some of my paranoia :smallredface:

[Serafina]

Question:
Mesmerist is a thing (or rather, a class in Pathfinder), and IIRC basically follows the same concept as the Beguiler with some extra goodies. So why not play one?

Advice:
It might be possible you can find some nice things in Mesmerist-guides even if you stick with the Beguiler.

[Hogsy]

Question:
Mesmerist is a thing (or rather, a class in Pathfinder), and IIRC basically follows the same concept as the Beguiler with some extra goodies. So why not play one?

Advice:
It might be possible you can find some nice things in Mesmerist-guides even if you stick with the Beguiler.

Oh right, I totally forgot about the Mesmerist. The concept does fit nicely too considering my character is a Noble who got thrown out of his House for being a **** up, lived the life of a ****-up but now wants to sober up and steal his House and all that comes with it from his family as sweet sweet revenge. Will look into it. Thanks a lot!

[Glimmer]

Take a look at this beguiler conversion (http://bit.ly/pathfinderbeguiler). I've seen it recommended often for those looking to port the beguiler over to PF and used it myself. It's pretty fantastic IMHO. I've never really felt like the mesmerist really adequately captured the rogue-type aspects of the beguiler myself.

[Sayt]

In addition to the mesmerist, Kitsune Fey bloodline Sorcerers get excellent mileage out of their favored class bonus of +1/4 level to enchantment DCs on top of Fey bloodline arcana's +2 compulsion DCs.

[radthemad4]

The Beguiler is my favoritest[sic] published class of all time. I'd prefer to play the 3.5 one over ertw's one (the one that Glimmer linked) or the Pathfinder Mesmerist if possible. If you can't use 3.5 PRCs, Pathfinder's Veiled Illusionist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/s-z/veiled-illusionist/) is pretty good (and gives you more illusion spells known).

Anyway, some stuff that could be handy:

Effortless Trickery (feat) (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/effortless-trickery/): If you're okay with being a gnome (gnomes get +1 to illusion DCs and +2 Cha which is awesome if you decide to be Cha based) or a human who takes the Racial Heritage feat to count as a gnome, you get to concentrate on a spell (e.g. Silent/Minor/Major Image) as a swift action and can cast other spells while maintaining an illusion. As an alternative, you could try asking your DM if you could get an Illusion School familiar (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/wizard/familiar/familiar-archetypes/school-familiar-familiar-archetype/) without having a specialist school (you can get a familiar with the Wasp Familiar feat, or by taking a Skill Focus and Eldritch Heritage (Arcane) (requires 13 Cha) ).
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/shadow-gambit/
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/solid-shadows-metamagic/

Aside: If you're a gnome and expect to often be in the same kind of terrain (e.g. if it's an urban campaign or something), you can take the Fey Magic alternate trait and nab Recharge Inner Magic (which recharges itself when cast as a racial sla) while in a favored terrain, giving you (kinda sorta) at will racial slas in that favored terrain. You can also get different racial SLAs with different alternate traits (e.g. ghost sound, grease, and silent image 1/day (except in your favored terrain where you can cast Recharge Innate Magic) if you go for Faerie Dragon Magic, though you'd give up your +1 to illusion DCs then). Racial slas are charisma based though.

[CasualViking]

You should have an honest pre-negotiation with your GM about save-or-lose spells vs. bosses. Something like "I will only cast single-round or new-save-every-round spells on bosses, and in return you will let them fail their save when the dice say so". Because many GMs become salty and start "emphasizing story over dice" when their favorite pets get to take zero actions and just get chumped.

[Serafina]

You should have an honest pre-negotiation with your GM about save-or-lose spells vs. bosses. Something like "I will only cast single-round or new-save-every-round spells on bosses, and in return you will let them fail their save when the dice say so". Because many GMs become salty and start "emphasizing story over dice" when their favorite pets get to take zero actions and just get chumped.If you do take Mesmerist, you do get a bunch of options that aren't save-or-lose spells. Dominate Person or the like still has it's place - throw it on mooks. But you can also focus on Illusions, debuffing and the like and be basically as effective.
(The same goes for the Beguiler, but IIRC the Mesmerist gets more options there).

[Hogsy]

The Beguiler is my favoritest[sic] published class of all time. I'd prefer to play the 3.5 one over ertw's one (the one that Glimmer linked) or the Pathfinder Mesmerist if possible. If you can't use 3.5 PRCs, Pathfinder's Veiled Illusionist (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/s-z/veiled-illusionist/) is pretty good (and gives you more illusion spells known).

Anyway, some stuff that could be handy:

Effortless Trickery (feat) (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/effortless-trickery/): If you're okay with being a gnome (gnomes get +1 to illusion DCs and +2 Cha which is awesome if you decide to be Cha based) or a human who takes the Racial Heritage feat to count as a gnome, you get to concentrate on a spell (e.g. Silent/Minor/Major Image) as a swift action and can cast other spells while maintaining an illusion. As an alternative, you could try asking your DM if you could get an Illusion School familiar (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/wizard/familiar/familiar-archetypes/school-familiar-familiar-archetype/) without having a specialist school (you can get a familiar with the Wasp Familiar feat, or by taking a Skill Focus and Eldritch Heritage (Arcane) (requires 13 Cha) ).
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/shadow-gambit/
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/metamagic-feats/solid-shadows-metamagic/

Aside: If you're a gnome and expect to often be in the same kind of terrain (e.g. if it's an urban campaign or something), you can take the Fey Magic alternate trait and nab Recharge Inner Magic (which recharges itself when cast as a racial sla) while in a favored terrain, giving you (kinda sorta) at will racial slas in that favored terrain. You can also get different racial SLAs with different alternate traits (e.g. ghost sound, grease, and silent image 1/day (except in your favored terrain where you can cast Recharge Innate Magic) if you go for Faerie Dragon Magic, though you'd give up your +1 to illusion DCs then). Racial slas are charisma based though.

Could you mention some good 3.5 PrCs for an Illusionist? Thanks a lot for the Pathfinder info. In truth, I am not very well versed in PF's prestige classes because those I've read are total crap.

[Serafina]

You generally have much less incentive to take Prestige Classes in Pathfinder, simply because base classes tend to get a lot more goodies as they level up. Especially when you compar spellcasters, who in 3.5 basically got nothing other than more spells from leveling up, and a PrC that advanced spellcasting thus gave you extra stuff. In Pathfinder, basically everyone advances something important, gets some good new stuff, or other such things from extra levels.


That being said, you might want to consider the Veiled Illusionist (https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/s-z/veiled-illusionist). You get full spellcasting, the standard caster chassis (so only two skillpoints, sadly), an extra illusion spell from the Wizard-list each level, the ability to disguise their spellcasting as being another spell, and the ability to concentrate on an illusion as a swift action (allowing you to maintain two of them) - as well as a bunch of other goodies.

If you actually want to play a full-on Illusionist, you might also want to consider a different base-class than the Beguiler. While the Beguiler gets a good amount of Illusions, their true strength lies in lowering enemy will-saves, bypassing immunity to mind-affecting, and other such things which you don't need as much for Illusions. And, of course, full spellcasting is just stronger if you want to go for spells alone.
Arcanist, Wizard, Sorcerer and Psychic (https://sites.google.com/site/pathfinderogc/occult-adventures/occult-classes/psychic) are probably the strongest choices - but you can actually go for a lot of classes since Veiled Illusionist adds spells to your list anyway. But if I wanted to go all-in on an Illusionist, I'd go for Psychic with Wizard Variant Multiclassing (Illusion school) and the Veiled Illusionist PrC. Lots of native Illusion-spells, psychic casting, some neat tricks, and eventually the ability to have three image-spells going at once while casting other stuff.

[radthemad4]

Could you mention some good 3.5 PrCs for an Illusionist? Thanks a lot for the Pathfinder info. In truth, I am not very well versed in PF's prestige classes because those I've read are total crap.Hmm... 3.5 has some generally good caster PRCs but I can't think of many that're illusion specific.

The absolute best Illusionist PrC is possibly Shadowcraft Mage (Races of Stone, page 120). It gets some nice things like concealment and free no extra costing Silent and Extend Spell on Illusions, but its main trick is to be able to spontaneously convert X image spells into castings of Shadow Conjuration/Evocation (except of one level lower than the image spell). e.g. you can use minor image to cast a shadow version of any 1st level conjuration (summoning), conjuration (creation) or evocation spell from the sorc/wiz list, major image to cast 2nd level ones, etc. (and if you have heighten spell, than just silent image will do). Shadowcraft mages also get to make their shadow spells more 'real'. The problem with Shadowcraft Mage is that it's easy to break. There are ways to cast higher level shadow spells than you should be able to at your current level and use feats (or traits in PF) that boost or benefit just one spell on silent image (e.g. 3.5's Arcane Thesis and Pathfinder's Spell Perfection and those traits that lower metamagic costs for a single spell) and then heighten Silent Image before converting it and have all of those effects on all your shadow spells, but if you tell your GM in advance that you'll avoid the former and not do too much of the latter (or go all out if you're in a high op game), Shadowcraft Mage can be strong and fun without being OP.

Shadow Adept (Player's Guide to Faeurun, pg 72) is pretty good (especially as a 1 level dip), but kinda setting specific.

Not an Illusionist thing, but an easy option for Beguilers is a single dip in the Mindbender PRC (Complete Arcane page 54) which can get you 100 ft Telepathy (i.e. silent communication with anything sapient even if you don't share a language) which is fun and has RP uses even if it's not particularly powerful on its own. It's possibly OP if you take the 3.5 feat, Mindsight as well (if something is within 100 ft of you and capable of thought, you know where it is).

But I think Pathfinder's Veiled Illusionist might be the next best thing to Shadowcraft Mage. If allowed, take both as Shadowcraft Mage is just 5 levels long anyway (e.g. Beguiler 5/Veiled Illusionist 3/Shadowcraft Mage 5/Veiled Illusionist 7).

Potentially useful links:

Beguiler Handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=363.0)
Shadowcraft Mage Handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=16433.0)
Shadow Conjuration guide (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5kvBvq2DEHjR1dOeEVkRUU4WlU/view)

[Hogsy]

I'm going with a Gnome or Kitsune Mesmerist, using the Recharge Innate Magic trick (either through a Wand or some other way) to get some more spells per day out of the character 'cause level 1 mesmerists have like 2 spells per day. Now, I'm split between whether I'll be using more enchantment or illusion spells. Fluff-wise, both races fit what I want to do with the character and with the backstory I've written for him so the choice is completely up to the +1 to DCs and whether I want it to go on Enchantment or Illusion. If I go the kitsune route, I'll be able to get Skill Focus: Knowledge for Eldritch Heritage for an arcane bond for free as well as a free Magical Tail feat for Recharge Innate Magic which is nice, 'cause if I pick it a second time I practically get Disguise Self and Charm person at-will. Gnome, however, is small which is also good. We'll see.


EDIT: I'm thinking of Rogue 4(Deceiver, a new Dreamscarred archetype) that adds a -2(scaling) penalty to Will saves of my SA targets when using Debilitating Injury, and then I get two rogue talents for a)a combat feat which can be an extra magical tail and b) a rogue talent that takes away the ability to make AoO from the targets of my SA.

Mesmerist 4 -> Rogue 4 -> Veiled Illusionist 6 -> Shadowcraft Mage 5 -> Veiled Illusionist 7 seems like a solid choice. I can even stay SCM 3 in exchange for Veiled Illusionist 10. And with only 4 rogue levels Practiced Spellcaster makes sure I lose no CL.